Off to the land of the stars
Saturday 1st November
Today was another travel day, our long haul flight from Zürich to Los Angeles. We checked out of our hotel at 10am, and headed to the train station to catch a train to the airport. The rail system in Europe is so much better than in little ol’ Adelaide. We have a lot of catching up to do!
Getting through the airport took a lot longer than it has previously because, for starters, we had to find lost and found to collect Michael’s iPad, which he left on the plane from Rome to Zürich. Luckily they found it, but we had a hard time finding Lost and Found! Zürich’s airport is built on about 5 different levels, and to get to other bits you need to go via tram. It’s like a maze.
Once we found Lost and Found (up the escalator, right, up another escalator, right again, through to arrivals, up the escalator, right again) we then got to try and find out way back to our original starting point, then try to find our departure gate. Several escalators, a tram, and even more escalators later, we found our gate. Michael got chosen for an extra security search which, to his disappointment, did not include a free prostate check.
Our flight, due to leave at 1:10pm left about 20 minutes late (amazingly this was the first flight where we’d had to wait for someone who was running late) and so commenced the 12 hour flight to Los Angeles.
It was a pretty uneventful flight. Neither of us got any sleep, and it was very cramped, but nothing out of the normal. We landed in LA at about 5:30pm, and went through the security checks. To be honest it was a lot less intense than I was expecting, but being digitally fingerprinted was kind of cool.
We caught a bus to the car rental place, and picked up our car. From there we drove to the hotel, which is on Sunset Boulevard, two blocks away from Hollywood Boulevard. I’m not going to lie, it was not a fun drive for me. Being on the wrong side of the road, and my spatial awareness in terms of how close other cars are to us was well and truly on the fritz, so it was basically half an hour of me trying not to cry, anxious as hell and wondering how the hell I was going to be able to do this for another 6 days. I’m still wondering about that to be honest.
We arrived at Days Inn at about 7pm, and checked in. A king size bed! Its like heaven! I will never take our king size at home for granted again. It’s actually a really nice hotel, and after freshening up and getting myself sorted, we hopped into bed, watched television for a while, then passed out. Being as we lost several hours, we’d been on the go for quite a while, so we were well and truly knackered.
Back home