Well we made it... finally... Hot damn that was a long flight! Right, well lets recap the events so far.
Wednesday was more finalising stuff and finally packing. Not as hectic as the last few days before it but still pretty hectic. On wednesday night we headed up to the domestic airport for the start of our journey to Sydney.
The flight to Sydney was pretty unevenful. Took just over three hours and we had an exit seat so plenty of leg room. We are not talking comfort here as we are still in cattle class but its better then having my knees up my nostrils. Arriving in Sydney we took a shuttle to the international side. I got "randomly" stopped to have myself and the gear checked for explosives... its amazing how nervous you get even when you
know you are not carrying any explosives!
We found out that our flight to LA was mainly taking cargo so there was a real limit on passengers... bonus! We had a row of four seats in the middle to ourselves and the plane was easily less than 1/2 full. At one point i wasling accross all 4 seats and Gem had found a row of three unoccupied somewhere else. I'm real glad of that because the flight was just over 14 hours.
When we got into LA we were both pretty nervous about getting through what we figured would be a pretty harsh airport. Were we wrong! We did get our fingerprints taken and a digital photo, but we were in and out in about 20 minutes... Gem even declared a jar of Promite (for someone in Canada) and they didn't even want to see it.
Anyway, that was when the fun began. It was about 6:30am on Thursday in LA and in essence we had been in airports and planes for nearly 24 hours now. We got a shuttle out to the hostel we had booked in West Hollywood. When we rocked up there it was about 7:30am and we found the place didn't open until 8am. Not a good start. At 8 some dude finally opened the doors and mumbled something incoherent to us. We went in and waited in reception for someone. Finally they came and then we tried to checkin. And I say "tried" here because they didn't have us on record at all. We showed them the printed confirmation we had... "Where did you get this?" he asked... "From your website where we booked!" Bloody Hell! Who writes these sites! Anyway, he had a look and saw that he could put us up for thursday and friday but not saturday! He didn't even try and see if he could fi us in somewhere else! We said we'd take the rooms anyway but we went off and called the hostel that was second on the list. They could put us in a shared dorm for thurs and fri and then a private room for saturday. We didn't really want to have to change hostels so we cancelled the first place and booked in at our new temporary home... Hostels USA.
Wow. So much nicer and more helpful staff... and free wireless internet, hence this rambling novel... and yes... I am tired and babbling... Anyhoo, we're in a room with a nice English couple so its all good.
Today we wandered hollywood a bit and then took a shutle, driven by a guy who looked exactly like Keanu Reeves from Point Break, down to santa monica beach and venice beach. Very nice but I must admit I'm not a huge beach fan... and it was pretty overcast so as many body-builders and half naked women as I hoped for. After that little outing we wandered back into Hollywood to see it by night time... which is much more exciting. Took plenty of photos so I'll have to put in some sort of gallery soon...
Anyway, should really go to bed now as tomorrow is Universal Studios I think, then maybe Disneyland the following day.
Ciao!
Duncan.
Right, well here we go people... the first real post and all you computer people out there might actually be impressed that I put it in 1 day before I had to have it done... thats about 3 days earlier than expected. True it is actually 11:55pm at night but hey, bite me.