Markus Wachter's Blog

Liebe Leser meines Blogs.  Danke fürs Lesen die letzten Wochen. Der Urlaub in USA ist vorbei. Nun startet bald unser Flieger nach Zürich und vor dort der nächste nach Stuttgart.
Unter folgendem Link könnt ihr unseren Flug verfolgen.
de.flightaware.com/live/flight/SWR41/history/20140111/0325Z/KLAX/LSZH

Es war eine unglaubliche Zeit. Ich habe die USA gesehen wie ich sie noch nicht gekannt habe.

Bis bald.
Euer Markus.

We had a good time here in the US. It was the last complete day. We drove to Beverly Hills to visit some homes of stars like Elton John, Christina Aguilera, Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Silvester Stallone, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson. At least we passed their homes believing that the informations from a celebrity map we bought is correct.
Beverly Hills is a huge and absolutely nice area with magnificent estates. I have no pictures today as I was the driver. I will keep in mind what I have seen.

Next station were the dead stars. We visited Forest Lawn Memorial where famous stars are buried. For example Walt Disney, Errol Flynn, Michael Jackson. The size of the graveyard is gigantic. All graves have only a plate lying flat on the grass with an inscription and without flowers planted. many graves are decorated with bouquets or pots of flowers.

Last station was Venice beach. We walked along the beach and the promenade and watched surfers, skaters and street artists.

Addendum:
Here is the complete route of our vacation in German language. Distances are in miles. If you want more detailed route options let me know.

Today we visited Hollywood in daylight. Again we walked over the walk of fame. But the first action was to visit the Hollywood Museum. comments from the internet were very different, but my own opinion is: great!

Time was turned back again when we looked at the items, pictures and figures that are exhibited in the formerly business house of Max Factor. He was the creator of the makeup! Originally he developed the also called pancake stuff to reduce the coloring effects caused by ambient light when color movies were introduced.

Later we arrived at the star of Elvis. Without knowing we bisited him on his birthday! And see: Even if many years are gone – he still gets flowers from his fans!

 

Even if the comments you can find for the Universal Studios are partly negative we decided to visit them today. The tickets cost $82 per person at our hotel – not a good price for a real swabian. But it was worth it.

On the way to the Studios we tried to get a close look to the hollywood sign. We drove trough a very steep and narrow part of hollywood where for sure many famous people live. Then we found real good place where we could take the following nice photo:

Then we arrived at the Universal Studios. General Parking category was good enough, we did not need much time for the walk to the entry. Christine had to bring back our chips because it was not allowed to take them into the park.

Inside the Studios are many attractions dealing with several movies created by Universal: Transformers, Mummy, Jurassic Park, Blues Brothers, Shrek.
One special show was the Animal Actors Show. The trainers showed with many animals how they are directed with voice, gesture. The animals even did their job completely without any trainer on the stage in some scenes.

 

A really impressive event was the studio tour. We drove with a bus through the Universal area and saw many sceneries from famous movies. Some sceneries were set up very costly, like the crashed plane for example: They crashed a real Boeing 747 and prepaired the area around it. You can see this even in Google Maps.

 

 

 

 

We left Vegas today and after a 4-5 hours ride through dry and sandy land we finally arrived again at Los Angeles. Here we will visit some famous places and exhibitions. It is not yet clear what will happen.
We stay in a very simple Inn at Sunset Boulevard / Hollywood, but very near to the walk of fame.
In the evening we took a first walk over the famous stars on the walk of fame. We also visited the chinese theater where stars left their signature, hands and foot stamp. Very impressive – some stars added a short notice.

The following picture shows the special lane for cars, that contain 2 persons or more. Later when you get nearer to the city the left lanes are not reserved for car pools but for paying drivers (FastTrack).

 

 

We walked some miles today in south direction of Vegas to watch nearly all hotels – at least from the outside. Some hotels are like small towns. For example the New York New York is a big hall with streets and houses inside and a huge roller coaster that runs even outside around all buildings and also inside the hotel.
The Luxor is a pyramid. Inside it is amazing – you realize that hotel with all the rooms are only the shell and the inner hall is as huge as the whole pyramid (with about 30 ‚floors‘) – too big to being able to take a photo.

Finally this evening we watched the fountains of the Bellagio hotel. It is really great. They are synchronized with the music. The big fountains sound like a firework when they shoot up high in the sky.

The hotels are not expensive here in Las Vegas. There are other ways to spend your money. Shops, restaurants, casinos, shows, …
All of these things can be done inside the hotel. The first floor is one huge shopping mall with unbelievable dimensions. And we are not in the biggest one.
Our hotel has 3626 rooms and its name deals with pink colored birds.
You got it? Be the first and win a little souvenir from vegas!

Today we visited again the outlet and in the evening walked around and visited Madame Tussauds.

We arrived in Las Vegas today. It is called Sin City. We recognized the fabulous city from a distance of 14 miles under a fog cloud. It was very heavy to drive throuh the center but we did so to visit the outlet stores in the south first and to see all buildings. It is really fabulous!
Pictures will follow, but must be uploaded later because of the poor mobile internet speed. Signal is perfect but speed low. Why? Better ask what for? The fast connection costs $14 per device and day.

Update: Some pictures from yesterday.

 

 

Today it was a really sad day. It began with the message that our good friend Manfred Meyer died yesterday. We are shocked. We hope and pray that his wife Brigitta gets strength from god for the following time. We hope that Manfred is in good hands now.

We are very confused aboud this, but anyway we decided to continue our trip and visited Bryce Canyon today. I am feeling better so we could make the whole trip today. At Bryce Canyon there are winter conditions. The elevation is about 8000ft. We had to take much care not to slip on the ice – would have had a bad consequence. (Is that correct grammar?).

A few words about my experience with mobile phone connection in the US. I bought a SIM card from Red Pocket before we started into our trip. The recent days I had no connection at all. This morning I got the news from the support that my SIM card may be out of order. Now as we are in Utah it works again. So I guess Red Pocket has a bad coverage in Arizona.