Los Angeles

Sepulveda Boulevard

The Hacienda Hotel was delightfully tacky Mexican. The consierage unhelpful, the lifts slow and half out of action. The bedroom lacked a kettle - it had a coffee machine instead. The restuarant was altogether different. The staff were super friendly and the meals good, but cheap. You needed to like meat-meat-meat. Huge amounts.
We did not sleep well and watched early morning TV - People and trucks were snowed in on the hills, rain was the order of the season. We even saw Arnie trying to pursuade the voters to vote for various laws in his smiling, non-threating manner. (Vote, or I'll be back).

Christian TV was appaling. There was a half hour show about how to take advantage of people who had come into mortgage areas; no cost; no risk; live the life style without the effort.

We managed a damp walk to the Pacific, alongside oil refineries and oil wells.

Gaming - Catholic Style

The Catholic church knows how to fund Christian education. All you do is hold roulette sessions in the school.

LAX is a strange airport. Avoid it if you can. You pass through boarding and security procedures so fast you don't have time to find a drink or needed food. Not quite true. There is a bar some great distance from the departure lounge - great for tired passengers to get to. When we got there we could only get a small drink to spare having given too many dollars to homeless children. We should be feeling good, but we were thirsty.

At last boarding time came. There was a great delay because they had changed the onboard bag allocation. So, all the duty frees were laid out on the floor, put into bags, labelled and put ina supermarket trolley - presumably to go to the hold. We then joined a queue of overladen passengers (what had suddenly happened to the new regulations?). The all the passengers were herded on to standing room only coach - very hot and airless for a 30 min drive down the runway, across the runway, back up the runway to a conrete ramp to board the plane. Guess what - the supermarket trolley was waiting at the bottom of the ramp for the unsuspecting passengers to collect and take on board.

The trip was a uneventful night flight. We saw a couple of movies and woke up near NZ to a blue sky.

Leaving the NZ airport is anything but quick. Bio-security is very tight. But Ian was waiting for us and we were soon in their home. My slippers were thrown at me as I entered the door. Zoe was too exited for pleasantries.