Today was a free day for us, but since we had so much fun on the float tour we decided to crash a Los Angeles city tour today. We talked to our tour guide, slipped her some extra money, and voila we are on the tour.

We started off by driving through downtown Los Angeles and seeing the Walt Disney Hall and Performing Arts Center. From there we headed to the Kodak Theatre which is now the permanent home for the Academy Awards. It’s kind of weird because it’s part of this big mall and the tour guide was saying that they put red curtains up to cover up the shops for the award show. Right around the corner from there was Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where they have various celebrities put their foot and hand prints into the cement. We saw old stars’ prints like John Wayne, George Burns, and Debbie Reynolds; as well as some new stars’ prints like Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford, and Johnny Depp. After that we went to Farmer’s Market to have lunch. There was every ethnic variety of food available. It was amazing. Unfortunately that’s when the rain started. After that the rest of the trip was from the bus. We drove down Rodeo Drive and through Beverly Hills. Overall we weren’t too impressed with the tour, but at least we can say, “we’ve been there; done that.”

Once we got back to the hotel we rested a bit and went out for a dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. It was raining and cold all afternoon, but there were still whole families that had started lining up along Colorado Boulevard in order to get a good spot for the Rose Parade tomorrow. It was amazing and sad at the same time that people were camping out in such miserable weather in order to see the parade tomorrow. We did some shopping for some Rose Bowl souvenirs and then called it a night.

Happy New Year from the West Coast. We got up at 5:30 this morning so that we could get ready to go view the parade floats getting decorated for the Rose Parade. We have complimentary breakfast each morning as part of the tour. From there we headed down to the first of the decoration sites. We saw six of the floats from the designer that has won an award for his floats for the last 12 years. The first thing I noticed when we entered the tent was the smell of flowers. It was just like walking into a florist shop. Each float starts as an artistic sketch. From the sketch the metal workers create the shell of the float on top of a truck chassis. Foam is injected into the shell and then painted the color the final float is going to look like. From there flowers, seeds, and grass are added one piece at a time to the float. It looks like a pains taking process and it’s pretty amazing that so many floats are created from scratch each year for the parade. We went to see a couple of more float making sites near the Rose Bowl next. Unfortunately it started raining and we got pretty drenched.

We were scheduled to go to Band Fest next, but we decided to sit that out since it was raining so much. Instead we went searched for a battery charger for our camera. I forgot our battery charger at home and the batter light came on while we were looking at the floats. We had the driver at the hotel drive us to Best Buy and we found a charger there.

In the evening we headed to the Civic Center next to the hotel for our New Years Eve bash. We had dinner, drinks and danced until midnight. We counted down the last seconds of 2005 and toasted campaign while confetti floated down from the ceiling. I wish everyone a great 2006. We miss the kids and hope to be home soon.