Thru the eyes of Road Warrior Stefany
So a few months ago a dear friend of mine approached me with an opportunity to visit Australia. Adri shares my passion for travel and knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist the invitation to visit Oz. The trip would be in conjunction with Contiki Tours – a company that focuses on tours for 18 to 35 year olds and Adri’s current employer. It took me all of 5 seconds to make the decision to join her. Seriously…would you have had said no?!?
Next step, run it by the boss – Mom. For those who don’t know my Mom, she’s the best! Not only did she whole-heartedly agree that I couldn’t pass up the chance to go, but she invited my cousin along for the trip. Edna Frances is the best traveling partner anyone could ask for –go with the flow, up for anything and always prepared for anything. Then on top of inviting Edna, my Mom worked out a plan to get some MonaVie related work done while on the trip. Cue the MonaVie Road Warrior blog!
Today we began our trek to Oz. Sadly we forgot Toto and ruby red slippers at home, but we are ready with a waterproof camera, Flip cam and MonaVie Active gels. The journey out to Australia had 3 legs: 1) flight from Fort Lauderdale to LA; 2) flight from LA to Sydney; 3) flight from Sydney to Cairns.
Our layover in LA was 12 hours, so we met up with my friend Ralphie – native Californian and good friend from my days at Disney Sports. Edna Frances had never been to Los Angeles (total shocker!), so Ralphie devised a plan to give us an extensive driving tour of the city. Luckily, we did the majority of this drive during the day so the infamous LA traffic wasn’t an issue. Woot!
We started our tour by leaving LAX and heading towards the city. Now I have no idea how or what streets we were on to see the sights in this order, I was only a passenger on this tour. Here’s our itinerary:
• UCLA
• The gates of Bel Air
• The Beverly Hills Hotel (where Lucy and Ricky stayed)
• Sunset Blvd
• The Hollywood Bowl
• Mulholland Dr (super scary, windy road that eventually leads up to the Hollywood sign – Ralphie refused to appease us and drive up)
• The Valley and Circus Liquors (where Cher from “Clueless” was mugged!)
• Disney Corporate Campus. One of the buildings has the 7 Dwarfs holding it up and the Animation Studio has painted a scene from “Tangled” on the Sorcerer’s Hat at the entrance. So cute!
• Downtown LA and the Staples Center
• OWN and E! Television Corporate. Where we stopped to have lunch with Amir. For those of you that don’t remember, Amir was kind enough to open his home to Chris and I during our cross-country road trip in 2009.
• Lunch at The Counter: a Specialty Burger Joint. I have just one word…YUM! If you are ever in the area, you must check it out.
• The La Brea Tar Pits (literally next door to the restaurant) where we learned all about the fossils and excavation process at the attached museum. Who knew there were tons of tar pits and that the majority of their 3 million-specimen collection was excavated between 1915 & 1917?
• The Hollywood Sign, well as close as we could get.
• Hollywood Blvd and past Grauman's Chinese Theatre, where they were setting up for the premiere of the new Antony Hopkins movie “Rite.”
• Back to Beverly Hills to have a “Pretty Woman” moment at Tiffany’s on Rodeo Dr and to have some goodies at Madame Chocolate.
• Threatened by a homeless man…in a wheelchair…off of Rodeo Dr! He told if we didn’t give him money someone would have to call the “Po Po” because they were going to have a “187” on their hands. For those not up on their cop call signs (I will admit, I wasn’t), a 187 is the call for a homicide. What better way to sum up our LA tour?
From Beverly Hills, Ralphie took us back to LAX to catch our flight to Sydney. We are all checked in but are having issues connecting to the Wi-Fi. Hopefully, they’ll Wi-Fi on the plane. ☺
