Day 33 - "I Have a Dream" Day

Today was a public holiday in the USA for Martin Luther King Day.  Our hotel is on a main busy tourist street and the hotel had signs up saying that the street would be closed between 9am and noon for the parade to celebrate.  At 10.30am we wandered out to watch some of the parade and as it turned out we were right at the tail end of it.  All we saw were a couple of 'low rider' cars (as seen in Hamish and Andy's 2011 USA Gap Year), the Hare Krishna's, a couple of police cars and that's it, the parade was finished and then came the every day traffic that was following and had caught up with the parade.  We did see a couple of fantastic sights that I must share with you. 

Sadly there are plenty of homeless in the USA and they all have signs politely asking for money for food, this rooster seems to live on the on one piece of pavement and his sign reads "why lie, I need money for beer and weed" Honesty is the best policy right???

This 4x rat tailed man - just because...

 

Here is one of the low riders in action (this photo doesn't do this piece of automotive engineering any favours - quite frankly it just looks like a boring car but it was far more than that when it was in action)

 

And this car, we don't know why but was just driving in reverse with it's boot open in the parade.

 

Finally we found a place for massages and they even had a sale with 40% off their massages, I was in massage heaven, poor Chris not so much.  Then when we left the massages we wandered for a bit and then finally we found a nail salon.  Shell and I were desperate for a pedicure (soles of my feet are now reminiscent of a babies bottom). Chris decided the pedicure wasn't for her and she went exploring.  Shell and I also got a show at this salon, it was gold.  This was an Asian owned and operated establishment that is a full service hair salon, and a huge part of their business is 'glamour photos'.

 

As it turns out there were 2 Japanese ladies having their hair and makeup done for their lovely glamour shots. Now these ladies who we assumed were friends as they left together never once smiled, never once talked to each other and certainly never laughed. We saw them all glammed up but couldn't take a photo of them as it was just far too obvious and rude on our part.  But honestly, their glamour photos are along these lines:

 

If you feel the need to see many other glam photo's and have a good laugh, here is the website: http://facesstudio.com/en/studio_glamour.php The lady who did Shell's pedicure was Vietnamese spoke perfect English and she was just lovely, of course my lady didn't speak a word of English.  The jack of all trades hairdressers / make up artists / photographers all rolled into one were even laughing once the Japanese ladies left (I wonder if they laughed at us when we left - probably did).  Sadly these Japanese ladies had their hair blow waved again before they left back to normal and they looked so much better than when they were tizzied up for the photo shoot.  This little story may not interest you but at the time we were having a great time watching all this go down.

 

Then we did an early "Duplex dinner" at the Cheesecake Factory.  This establishment is not as it seems and offers everything under the sun and not just Cheesecake. After dinner we roamed the streets checking out some local markets and we were in search of a special battery to place in the digi travel scales (so we know where we are up to with our suitcase weight allowance) which thus far had eluded us. But eureka, it was like striking gold, a battery was finally located and one suitcase has since been packed, weighed and put away never to be opened again until Australia!

 

Headed back to the hotel and we were back in our room around 8.15pm.