Getting to LA

After not much sleep and a very early morning, we got to the airport with family in tow. After checking in next to Juice, Tig and Bobby from Sons of Anarchy (so exciting!) we went up to the departure lounge for a cup of tea and our final goodbyes. Surprisingly, there were less tears (from me!) than I thought there would be but it was still a bit emotional and scary… but mostly exciting. We were finally leaving! In the line at customs in Sydney I managed to get a (somewhat blurry) photo of Juice on the sly and Curt asked Bobby if we could get a photo with him but he brushed us off and grunted a ‘no’. We’re not happy with him so we’re hoping he’ll get killed off next season!! Take that Bobby.
The flight from Sydney to LA was pretty uneventful, we were sat next to a guy from Perth called Lachy, we all got on well and had a few chats over our meals! I swapped seats with Lachy as we started to descend over the city so that I could look out the window and get some snaps. Curt and him were having a chat and as we got off the plane and started to walk up the arrivals gate the two of them realised they went to high school together… only took them 14 hours to notice!!
I was completely blown away by the landscape as we circled above the city. I’d never seen anything like it! The city just sprawls out as far as the eye can see and then reaches all the way to the mountains, which are a marvel to look at themselves. So big and so close to the city, it was amazing. I also have never seen so many baseball and football fields in my life… they were everywhere! We also flew directly over the Staples Centre and the Hollywood sign, I was so excited to get off that plane and start exploring!

Our original plan was to find the free phone at LAX, call the hostel and jump in the $16 shuttle to our hostel in Hollywood, but by the time we collected our bags and cleared customs (they didn’t like that I had two passports so it took us a bit longer than we would have liked) we were so tired that we just wanted to sleep! So, we ended up jumping in a cab and getting him to take us… much easier! However, this meant that our first $$ spent in the US was on a $70 taxi ride, where in some parts we were sure we would crash (hello crazy russian cab driver!). We did make it to our hostel though and after an easy check in we had a shower and decided to take a quick 2 hour power nap… 4.5 hours later we woke up and realised we needed to be at our ice hockey game in an hour! We then also remembered we needed to print the tickets and because the hostels printer wasn’t working we got ready and headed for the internet cafe down the street. On arrival we noticed they had no computers or printers and it was essentially just a cafe with free wifi. Oh dear. We had now ran out of time to make the 25 minute taxi ride to Staples Centre so instead we took a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard. We looked at all the stars on the walk of fame, peered inside the Graumans Chinese Theatre and throughly entertained ourselves, and annoyed others, by prancing up and down the piano staircase (each step plays out a different key, amazing!). We started to get hungry and we noticed that we hadn’t eaten for 12 hours!! So we stopped in at a Buffalo Wings restaurant and ate fried pickles and hot wings with a pint of beer whilst watching 2 games of baseball, 2 games of basketball AND the ice hockey game we should have been at! Excellent! We thought it was the perfect ending to our first day in the states.

Now we’re in bed getting ourselves ready for our first day at DisneyLand tomorrow… we can’t WAIT!!
Chloe x