Tuesday, June 26, 2012

California Vacation Part 11: Universal Studios and Santa Monica/Venice Beach

Our favorite day in Hollywood was our day at Universal Studios. Chris and I are suckers for theme parks. Give us Hershey Park, Universal Studios, or especially Disney World and we are Happy, HAPPY people!
The most exciting part was that we got to ride the brand new Transformers ride before it even officially opened a week later. This was a HUGE deal to Chris who loves his Transformers.
He had to try the special Energon Cream Soda drink after the ride, with collectors cup, of course.
We were at Universal on a Thursday and literally walked onto every single ride with virtually no wait times and even rode a few rides more than once. The Universal Studios Lot Tour is always neat to see movie sets, and production studios. I believe this was part of the War of the Worlds set:
That night we ate at Samba Brazilian Steakhouse and Lounge at Universal CityWalk. Here, the waiters bring different kinds of meat on skewers around to your table and you pick out what you want, as you want it. I got to sample a ton of different things, and had my choice of many different sides at their salad bar.
They also had live dancers and I had 2 of these amazing caipirinhas!

Finally, on our last day of vacation we headed out to Venice Beach and Santa Monica Pier. This day was mostly walking along the beach and people watching...which resulted in me getting pretty sunburned!

I started off the day with an iced soy latte!
Santa Monica Pier
and dipped my toes in the pacific

I don't think Universal Studios hired this man...he seemed pretty non-legit...and crazy. He seemed to honestly believe that Transformers will ultimately bring the end of our world. Let's just say Venice Beach was a little bit "cray-cray" with some of the people around...
We ended our vacation with a dip in the pool and hot tub at our hotel for a relaxing last night. And that, my friends, concludes our San Francisco/Hollywood Vacation!

 California Vacation Recaps: 

2 comments:

Mom said...

Ahh..California! One of my favorite vacations. There is something about dipping your toes into the Pacific as opposed to the Atlantic. Sounds like a full, wonderful vacation.

Heather said...

I love Universal and actually went to my high school prom there years ago! I haven't been in a long time, but your post is making me want to drop in sometime soon.