I'll admit that I have been a little aprehensive about this enstire US trip because of the sheer vastness and ambition of what I am attempting to accomplish. 1 month, 8 cities and 3 modes of transport to arrange. Not to mention 8 different places to stay, tours in each place and every other ancillery thhing to arrange. A whole lot of things to go wrong or get knocked around if things go pear shaped for some reason. I have been spending each of my weekends in a leadup to this trip planning, checking and rechecking to ensure I didn't leave anything out.
So far the planning has paid off as everything has gone like clockwork from the trip to the airport, to wheels up over the Pacific, to touching down in LA and getting over to Hollywood. About 24 hours in and I don't have a bad thing to say. When I got to the airport I cleared customs and immigration easilly with my Qantas status and when I got onto the plane itself I was greeting with a surprised that I had been upgraded from economy to business class. Score. I enoyed full drink services (alcoholic and non), meal services (3 gourmet meals) and best of all a fully reclining sleeping capsule meaning the 12 hour flight passed like nothing for me.
We touched down in LA on time and I again breezed out through customs and immigration to whcih I was greatly surprised, standing outside terminal 4 of LAX in less than 30 minutes after leaving the aircraft. I found my travelling partner FuBo easilly again at Terminal 3 and then we hopped the Budget shuttle to the Budget car lot. LAX is built in a horshoe type of design and it would appear that each car rental company operates a constantly running shuttle that goes by waiting to be hailed by people which then takes them several kilometers away from the airport. A long cry from setting out into the car yards outside the airport in Australia, especially being these yards have high end cars like the new Camero's (New Bumblebee yay). We were then upgraded to a Pontiac G6 which is a decent car as far as I can tell.
The biggest problem that has been encountered so far is driving on the right hand side which makes for over-corrections and nervous turning angles. FuBo had a few problems with that but nobody drove into oncoming traffic. We missed a few turns but the GPS recalculated and we started learning its nuiances after a while. Tomorrow is my turn to drive so we'll see how I do. The main thing I think is to have patience to ensure you don't panic and do something stupid.
LA itself reminds me of the gold coast just on a much more massive scale with the heat, the crowds, the attractions and extravagant homes and shopping. That said it is much busier, dirtier, and a lot more expensive houses and cars. Mustangs, Hummers and Corvets all over, practically every car I saw had only one person in it. I heard the stat that in the LA area the number of cars outnumbers the actual people by 3-1 and I would believe it form what I have seen so far.
Best...pose...everWe walked the walk of fame, noting which stars we recognised. Sadly I recognised alot which is strange when I cannot recall what actors play in a movie after I watch it. We saw the Egyptian theather which is the oldest in LA and it's much more famous cousing the Chinese theather (made by the same guy) , the Kodak theather, all the street performs running around which was just like Tokyo where people dressed up as their favourite characters or celebrities. There were Batmans, Supermanss, Wonder Women and even a Rambo. The problem is each of these people want money if you ttake a photo of them and at $3 a pop I wasn't going to bother. We went to the wax museum where I could get some photos with some celebrity lookalikes.
Not feeling very safe...
We also did a tour of the Hollywood, West hollywood and Beverly Hills areas with such places as the Sunset Strip, Rodeo Drive and of course going up the hill to the famous Hollywood sigh which was originally a marketing stunt by a realty company. The houses up on the hill has been there since the 20's, some from the 60's so really the houses were nowhere near as austentacious I had been expecting. In fact a lot looked like they descended from classic European designs which doesn't really suit the climate at all. Most were actually rather run down and in need of a good paint job. Of course Beverly Hills didn't disappoint with its lavish designs in both the landscape and the houses.
I think we be in Hollywood boy In all lets just say I put in a heroic effort of picture snapping today where I used up my entire battery and my finger started to get sore from all the clicking. Right now I am just resting up for a big day at Universal Studios tomorrow. More updates to come unless Lorne Green comes back to take back what's his...
If Lorne Greene comes back to life, would anyone care?
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you're alive and the natives haven't converted you to creationism or scientology yet. But the fact that you got bumped to first class displeases me. Trans-pacific flights are about suffering, damn it!