We were pleasantly surprised on a recent 5 day trip to Las Vegas to stumble upon a day tour of Los Angeles. Since it was our first trip to the city of lights, we wanted to experience as much as possible and so we took in many of the attractions both on and off the strip. While taking in the Vegas sights, we found this tour of LA through the Flamingo hotel that we couldn’t pass it up. So on our second last day, also being my birthday, we opted to take the day tour of Los Angeles as opposed to the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam. The LA tour was cheaper and added spontaneity to the trip.

The morning of the adventure starts out at about 6am (we agree that it’s quite early for vacation hours), the van picks us up at our hotel where the driver greets us with a small breakfast of a muffin and choice of juice. There we begin the 4-1/2 hour trek to Los Angeles. The driver being very friendly; interacts well with the group, provides a film of the places we are about to see and thankfully, allows us to take as many pictures as we see necessary.

The first stop is just outside Warner Bros. Studio and Film lot, where if lucky you may catch a glimpse of a famous celebrity. Then onward for a short walk of Hollywood Blvd including the Chinese Theatre; such a great place, you can walk along outside and check out the many celebrity hand, fist, or knee prints from the golden era to today engraved in the concrete. And as a souvenir, we got our own handprints together; well worth it as it only takes about 15 minutes. From there, a drive through Sunset Blvd, a stop in Beverly Hills where the driver points out the homes of Madonna, Keanu Reeves and the like, a walk through the shops on Rodeo Drive where we also saw the hotel featured in “Pretty Woman” and last but not least an hour and a half at Santa Monica Pier for a provided lunch of a sandwich, water or juice as well as free time to do as you please.

Although the trip was short we really enjoyed it. It was another welcomed adventure that we hadn’t anticipated on a trip to Las Vegas. For anyone interested there are other options for this tour as well, if you plan it correctly, there is the possibility of taking the van into LA and staying until the next tour makes its way there 2 days later.

Overall, it was a fabulous and unexpected birthday adventure. We arrived back in Las Vegas a little late (around 10pm) but since the strip is always alive there was still plenty of things to do and see.

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Paragliding in Chile

Posted On 2009-02-27 , 10:58 AM

Unexpected Adventures

Well this is my second attempt at writing a blog entry and I thought I’d like to write about some unexpected adventures that we stumbled upon during some of our past holidays.

I guess unexpected might be the wrong term here as all of these activities are a part of the experience provided by the places we visited. But I would say unexpected if you don’t know they exist. Sometimes as travelers we get lucky and stumble upon them and they make the trip just that much more memorable.

My first unexpected adventure came a couple of years back on a visit to Chile when we were at Valley Nevado on a ski/snowboard tour. Riding down the slopes on my new board, I saw a shadow looming overhead without any sound like an airplane or any other motorized flying machine. Peacefully floating above me was a tandem paraglider gracefully flying to the bottom of the hill next to the main chair lift. I immediately told my girl that I just had to do this.

I went to the top of the hill where they were preparing the gliders for launch and asked them when I could go and how much. They said anytime that day, they only operated on certain days and there was no sign or any significant display that told you this was available. The price was $85 U.S. the pilot said he would fly me in trade for my helmet. I said nah, even though the helmet only cost $50 CAN. and at that time 50 CAN was equal to $42 U.S. I still needed to look cool for the rest of my snowboard trip. (ha ha ha)

We got all suited up and off we went, half way through the flight I convinced him to let me fly and I have to tell you it was fantastic, we did a flyby over the hotel bar and pool followed by a real sharp right hander just before landing. It was probably one of my most memorable moments. For an extra fee, I got pictures and a little video of the flight for my girl to put in our travelers scrap book.

When we booked our trip to Chile, we needed to make sure that my girl could ride her blades (a real short version of skis) on the hills over there as we did not want to get all the way there and have to rent skis. We were told that it shouldn’t be a problem and then uh huh, the unexpected…. we were told that she wouldn’t be allowed to use her blades on the CAT ski portion of our tour. She said that I could go with the group and she would be fine on her own. Being that it was our very first vacation together coupled with being madly in love, I didn’t want her to be alone. We spent that day in the city of Los Andes and just walked all around, it was fantastic, we saw sights, sounds and smells that we have never experienced before. We got to delve into the true South American culture that is Chile. Certainly an unexpected adventure to remember.

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Adventure

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