Arriving at LAX

WE ARE HERE..

Pete and I touched down on American soil at 6.30am this morning. My first ever long haul flight done and the flight went better than I thought it would. We flew with Virgin and their in-flight entertainment system was awesome, it kept the time passing by quickly.

Customs was a nightmare in LA , it took us roughly two hours to get through but the kind fella at customs happily agreed to stamp my passport for me when I finally reached the front counter (I hate when they don't do it!) so that made me a happy lady after 15 hours of flying + check-in.

We left LAX airport, caught a shuttle bus around to the car hire and was met by an American named Jesus, no joke. He was great, checked us in fairly quickly, politely broke it to us that we had to pay an extra $25 a day due to us being under 25
(we half expected that to be the case, usually is..one more year until that's over!) and then chucked in a GPS with our booking for free - off to another good start.

What I found strange was that they processed our booking and then sent us out in the lot to pick our vehicle, with a few restrictions of course due to our age (would've been nice to take the Mustang!) They had the keys left in all the vehicles outside and confirmed that once we had picked the vehicle we wanted we could hop in and drive away - they would just record the registration as we drove out - I've never seen that happen in Australia, ever.

Pete and I wasted no time jumping straight into it, as soon as we had our hire car we proceeded to dive in the deep end and take on the LA roads in peak hour traffic on a Monday morning. Let's just say it was interesting...I was driving first up and was a bit

nervous but once I got my head around sitting on the other side of the car and then driving on the other side of the road I was sweet.

The biggest challenge I found was just keeping the car in the centre of the lane, steering from the other side tripped me out a bit and reaching for the gear stick on the right instead of the left - still gets me every time!

Feeling a bit tired and hungry from the long flight we stopped at a small burger restaurant in downtown LA to grab a bite to eat then proceeded to our Hotel to try our luck hoping our room was ready.

Check in wasn't until 4pm however again we got lucky and they allowed us to check in at 10.30am instead. The Hotel we are staying at is absolutely beautiful, the lobby is incredible and when you walk through the doors you are greeted by a massive Christmas Tree and Christmas Carols - for anyone who knows me, knows how happy Christmas makes me...everything Christmas is heaven to me.

After checking in and sussing out the hotel and it's facilities, we drove around town a little more to explore the local area.

We stopped in at a cute little Donut shop so Pete could grab a coffee and of course grabbed a donut before we went to "VONNS" the local grocery store for a few bits and pieces.

We then went to suss out Walmart and yes I can confirm it is as massive as you see on TV. The particular one we went to was similar to a K-Mart, also selling TV's, had a grocery store in it, a discount Chemist store AND a McDonalds - yup, Huge!

After this we went for a bit of a cruise around Anaheim to explore some more, there is literally a burger place on every corner. We went for a bit of a drive past Disneyland as it's not too far from our Hotel and it looks amazing. I cannot wait to go there next week!!

Tomorrow we've got a bigger day of exploring planned. Our aim is to go check out LA a bit more, do some shopping at Hollywood Boulevard, maybe do some tours around Hollywood and drive to Santa Monica and see what that area has to offer.

The weather has been nice today, jeans and a tee shirt kind of weather so nothing overly different to your average weather in Sydney. We were going to have dinner tonight at the restaurant downstairs in our Hotel but were both completely knackered so will go out tomorrow night instead. (I know, super boring for our first night in LA but we're here for 10 days before moving onto Vegas so we've got plenty of time)

Time to hit the hay, fingers crossed I get a decent nights sleep