27th July 2016

We needed a quick start to the day and just went to the hotel restaurant for brekkie. Ju was hating being away from Palm Springs, so the start to the day was a little rough. And breakfast didn’t really help.

We had to wait ages to get seated, ages to order, ages for food, my espresso cost $8USD + tax and our food was just okay. We were very disappointed and decided we’d have to research and find better cafes for breakfasting around Beverly Hills.

We decided to turn this day around and go lie by the pool. It seems to work for us!! And it totally did.

Actually, what really cheered Ju up was a visit to CVS first for sunblock, and she found lots of NYX stuff she’s been looking for! Yay!

The pool at SIXTY is beautiful, although it’s very LA. We did miss the chill vibes of the Ace at Palm Springs, but soon we were relaxing under the rays of Cali sun. Seriously, the weather is sooooo good!

Today we had another TV screening to audience…The Late Late Show with James Cordon. And the guests were Cara Delevingne and Dave Franco!!! Um, yes please!!! And the musical guest was Leon.

So, we planned out our drive, pre planned our parking and left with twice as much time as Google told us.

LA traffic is horrendous, and I’m so glad that every time we went out, we listened to all the wise people and automatically doubled the mapped time, and then plus’d some. It meant we actually got everywhere on time. (Maybe we should be doing this at home as well?!)

We’d both dressed up a little, and we’re wearing black heeled boots. Which we regretted so badly, waiting on the sidewalk for half an hour in the 3pm sunshine. We were sweating balls and any breeze that came along was gratefully funnelled to any body crevice we could get it to.

After all the expected lines and checks and lines and pre-game rules etc we were finally in the studio.

The set is hella cool, and both of us wanted to go touch and play with things. But we had to stay standing on the white line because we were filming a special segment before the full taping, called Drop The Mike. Basically James, Dave and Cara all make a boxer/fighters entrance and then they have a rap battle off.

We were lucky enough to be on the floor, and right at the end of the stairs that James comes down, and part of the pathway that Cara came down. (Dave came in from the other side and they all meet up on a circular stage which the audience are all surrounding).

We did the take a couple times, so basically we were just there hanging out with them, dancing, ill’in and chill’in. Ju actually touched Cara, which makes me feel like a dork writing it, but in real life she’s so beautiful and cool that it was all just really exciting. We feel like she’d be a fun girl to hang out with!

After they wrapped up that segment we went onto the real filming.

Unfortunately, because we were on the floor we all had to be shuffled out and reseated. Earlier on Ju and I had been given special black bands, which we never figured out the meaning for, but when we were moved out we were separated into a group. Now, Ju and I being contentious, made our way to the front of the line.

And this totally backfired, because we all ended up being turned around and then we were at the end of the line. And everyone in front of us got the BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE. And there was no room left for us at the end, so they put us in the SHITTIEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE. (They weren’t the shittiest seats in the house but definitely very shitty compared to the seats we were thisclose to getting – Ju.)

It wasn’t all bad though, and we did get a view of the stage, and the banter was hilarious, and we all had fun! (That’s James, Ju, Cara, Dave and I).

We finished up filming about 7pm or so, and we’re very hungry! We had planned to shop at The Grove afterwards, but first, we had to feed our faces.

And did we ever! We found an Italian restaurant called Maggiano’s Little Italy and it looked super fancy on the outside, but warm and homely on the inside. (We actually literally think it used to be a homestead).

So we order our pasta and the waitress said ‘and what would you like your take home one to be?’ We looked at her dumbly/blankly until she explained that when you order a pasta there you get to pick a second one to take home for free, for lunch the next day as a gift. So I got two pastas for $13.95 and because Ju got four cheeses in her pasta, she got her two for $15.95!!! It was crazy to discover this at the end of our trip, where we have been spending hundreds of dollars just to feed ourselves.

Mind you, if we’d been eating pasta twice a day we’d be going back with even more oversized weight than just our baggage.

We also had a couple of cocktails and mine was called Sicilian something and it utterly floored me. I think the combo of carbs and booze went straight to my head and I was drunk! I couldn’t even finish the drink, because I still had to drive us home. Luckily we had another couple hours to walk it off, around the shops.

So we sloppily left the restaurant and headed into The Grove.

It’s so beautiful, and anytime we have to do late night shopping, we want it to be like that.

It’s three levels of mostly high end stuff (we didn’t buy anything at all, hahaha), but all the shops are surrounding a courtyard, so the whole thing feels like you’re outside. And the courtyard has lights and fountains and all sorts of pretty things!

There was also a concert on that night…Cher Lloyd, but we kinda turned up right when it was clearly ending.

After wandering around, our drunkenness morphed into tiredness and we made our way home.

I barely got in the door and had to go straight to sleep…SO TIRED! It’s a reoccurring theme for this holiday!!

Tashy. xx