When last we left our travelers, we had just had a very yummy lunch at the Tam O'Shanter Inn & had experienced a wonderful morning exploring together. We had directions thanks to mapiglet fan to drive up closer to the Hollywood sign but by now it was getting to be around 1pm & we had such a great view of it from our room & from Griffith park that we decided we wanted to explore a bit more of Hollywood around the hotel before our meeting time of 4pm with the group. So after a quick stop at a convenience store to get some water & soft drinks for in the room, we decided to head on back & return the rental car. We went back to the room for a brief time & found these treats waiting for us.
This was our special book with all our meeting times & our itinerary.
After admiring our loot, we headed out again stopping by the lobby to check in with our adventure guides Diana & Kristin. They told us to meet up with them in the Canyon room at 4pm.
Off we went to explore Hollywood boulevard.
I am a huge Julie Andrews/Mary Poppins fan so I was excited to find her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame & then her hand prints at Grauman's.
Eric with Jimmy Stewarts hand prints......he loves him. In fact we are seeing "It's A Wonderful Life" at the Tennessee Theatre tonight.
Another attempt at an artsy shot at the Chinese theatre.
This one was especially poignant as we just lost Paul Newman not that long ago & I love that his & Joanne Woodwards are together.
How's this for love & devotion........getting down on the sidewalk in Hollywood to have your photo taken with your favorite star.
Did you know that no one has been nominated more times for an Academy Award than Walt Disney? He got 59 nominations & earned 26 awards. I think that more than deserves a star. In fact, he has 2 one for film & one for TV.
Another cute saying on the Road to Hollywood sidewalk in the Hollywood & Highland Center.
At the end of the Road to Hollywood or how some of us got here sidewalk is a big couch with the Hollywood sign in the background. Is it a casting couch????????????? What a great sense of humor Hollywood has.
These elephants are at the H & H center as well & we would see them again later. When they decided to build the H & H Center they wanted to recreate a movie set so this set with the big arch & the elephants was built in Hollywood in 1916 for the film Intolerance.
So it was getting close to time to meet up with our fellow adventurer's for the first time. We headed back to the room to freshen up & change clothes. We followed the signs to the Canyon room. They had cheese, crackers, veggies & sodas for us. We sat at a table with Andrea & Brian from Michigan. I had gotten to know Andrea on the thread for our trip & it was great to meet her & her husband in person. They gave us a little ice breaker game to do, but we were too busy talking & when Diana said you have a few minutes to finish your answers to the top portion we were like
we better get to work. The top portion asked questions about you like what you were most excited to see etc. & the bottom portion was designed to make us get up & move about the room to get to know each other. We were supposed to find someone who had met a celebrity, could name all 7 dwarfs, had never been to
Disneyland, had been to a studio lot & had visited all eleven Disney theme parks. We got all of them but the last one, although we did have a group member who has been to 8 of the 11. After this Diana & Kristin told us a bit about their background with the company & then they went around & asked us all to introduce ourself, where we were from & what we were most excited about seeing. We were a group of 24 adults as this was an adults only version of this trip. We had 2 mother/daughter groups, 1 mother/son group & 2 friends that were together & the rest of us were couples. We ranged from as far away as Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Georgia, to 2 couples from California.
After our getting to know you session, we were headed to dinner at the Trastaverte Italian Restaurant in the H & H Center. We walked across from the hotel after having our photos taken with a clapboard & this was the first appearance of the infamous Adventures by Disney paddle that we would follow for the rest of our trip.
We stopped & had a nice photo made.
We had our own private dining room in the back for the restaurant.
They served us red or white wine, 2 kinds of salad, antipasta & flatbread.
We were able to choose our entree of salmon, penne pasta with tomato basil sauce, veal scaloppini or chicken marsala. Eric & I both had the salmon & it was very tasty. I think I was too excited so I didn't take any pictures of our food until dessert. After we had enjoyed our appetizers & salad & they worked on our dinner, we had a little Disney trivia gameshow.
It was hilarious & by no means a high pressure game. The host was Matt & he was great & really funny & enjoyed having an adult audience. Our fellow adventurers that were picked seemed to really enjoy the show & I will always remember Mark & his great answers of "yes" & Karen for her frequent use of "phone a friend" for everything. It was alot of fun & before we knew it dinner was there. Diana sat on our end of the table & we had fun chatting with her & getting to know her.
Dessert was tiramisu & we were given our first pin-which became an exciting event every day. Every day there is a theme of the day & a word of the day. Today's theme was It All Started with a Mouse so our first pin was Mickey of course & the word of the day was Mickey Mouse.
After that we were told to meet in front of Twist the hotel restaurant the next morning at 7:50am & were set free for the evening.
We decided to explore a bit more & wanted to go get ice cream at the Soda Fountain since neither one of us really like tiramisu.
So we headed out across the street to the Disney Soda Fountain.
They have cool pictures of famous people that have stopped in & this was one of my favorites.
We both had an ice cream. I had the make your own sundae with one scoop of peppermint ice cream & hot fudge. The ice cream here is made by a California family & you can tell it's homemade premium ice cream. There were little pieces of peppermint in it. So yummy.
Eric had a double scoop sundae with chocolate & cookies & cream with hot fudge.
In prepartion for tomorrow when we would visit Jim Henson studios here a couple of pictures taken this night.
Inside the soda fountain....the Muppets.
And look who's star we found.
Once outside we noticed how cute the Christmas windows were.
We would be touring the El Capitan in the morning so is a fitting shot to end this day.
Exhausted from our long day, we headed back to the hotel & relaxed in the room. I did some journaling & did a live posting to my pre-trip report.
It had been a great day & we had a lot to look forward to tomorrow.
Up next---an organ, a famous person & a frog oh my
The other room had a view of the H & H center.
And I was up every couple of hours the first night, with the same time zone thing, but I forced myself to go back to sleep each time I woke up. 
. I was only taking pictures, he said no problem but head on back to the hotel now, so I did. Eric got a kick out of me getting in trouble!
I have lots & lots more to come.
That was an awesome view to have!!!!!!! I am glad you didn't get in trouble too. Maybe it was because it was so early morning that I did who knows. 
It really is up there & I have to admit when we were around the back of the observatory & I looked over my stomach did the swirly thing. I love that you used to hang out at the Merry Go Round. I remember reading about a restaurant near the studios that Walt liked, but I figured it was long gone. Thanks to Lurkyloo---she suggested it to me since we were doing a whole Walt morning. You should go when you go back.
Dh and I did this trip in June. I can't wait to hear your impressions of this adventure!
