Rodeo Drive

I have dreamed of going to Rodeo Drive ever since I watched Pretty Woman. As a big movie fan, I also wanted to visit L.A for the Universal Studios and all the glam that you see in Hollywood. So you could imagine my happiness when my friend Berry said, he would be working there for a month and I could come visit. Having already booked my trip to Australia, I had only one weekend after my trip to go. I arrived back home on a Monday, worked until Friday afternoon and flew 5 hours to Los Angeles (L.A). Being extremely jet legged, I would fall asleep at 10 p.m regardless of where I was. Lucky for me, Berry did not mind having a snoring friend in the front seat. Jet leg also made me wake up at 5 a.m., at which point I decided to use Google maps to find directions to Rodeo Drive. However due to being very tired, I made a mistake and ended up with directions to Rodeo Road.

My friend Berry was a bit grumpy as I woke him up at 7am since I could not wait another moment before going on a drive through Beverly Hills. He also refused to admit that he was snoring. Luckily for him every time I tried to record it as proof, he would turn around and stop snoring. As the car rental did not have a GPS, we had to follow the hand written directions that I scribbled on the back of a cereal box. After about 30 minutes of driving, we started to realize that we were not in the glamours part of town but an industrial part of the smog city.

As I love going on road trips, I decided to follow my instinct and managed to get back to the main road, Santa Monica Boulevard. As gas was running low, we decided to fill up and I asked a young good looking guy in a Porsche where Rodeo Drive was. To which he looked over our Hyundai and replied “not sure you should be going there”. Horrified by the response, I decided to continue to drive as the views of L.A. were incredible and the gated communities were identical to those seen in Hollywood films.

Paparazzi in Beverly Hills

I was rewarded by my positivity as I ended up right outside of the Beverly Wilshire! The hotel which was made famous by Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. After having an early dinner overlooking the hotel, we saw the poor bell boy trying to fit shopping bags in the latest model of a sports car.  Going around the area, we also saw a “star” who posed in front of a restaurant while paparazzi’s took her pictures. To this day, we just know it was someone from High School Musical but no idea who the actress was.

Overall, it was a fun trip and it taught me a lesson about spell check and jet leg.