First day of holiday excitement eventually gave way to boredom as the 11 hour transatlantic flight progressed. Sure, there was the excitement of unwatched movies and new TV shows to discover ... but at four hours in it dawned on Ailsa we weren't even half way there yet, and it didn't look like BA would be feeding us anymore snacks for the duration.

Still, it's to be expected that the first day is one to be endured and so it was until we stepped off the airport shuttle bus at the Enterprise rent-a-car lot and felt the sun beating down on our backs. About turn and we well and truly got our faces in it!

Our Enterprise rep Drew was initially our friend, but I think started to wane on us as we ended up trying almost every model of car in the parking lot to see which 'trunk' would accommodate both our cases (surprisingly few ... but we figured this might be the case judging by the difficulty the Glasgow taxi man had on the way to the airport a mere 20 hours previously).

The traffic out of LA was every bit the anticipated nightmare. Granted it was 5:15pm on a Friday. Hence we were greeted with anywhere from 5 to 9 lanes of car park. Thankfully we managed to join the car pool lane (which later turned out to be an illegal manoeuvre - there was nothing to say you could only join it at certain points!!) and progress was improved considerably. After about an hour and fifteen minutes we had dragged ourselves to the outskirts of LA in time for sunset over the hills (see pics) and from there on it was a comfortable scoot down to Oceanside and our one night stay in a local hotel. I popped out to get a little fast food from a local Mexican place, but by the time I'd gotten back to the hotel it ended up remaining mostly uneaten having been stabbed at by two semi-conscience travellers that had been awake for over 24 hours!

Day 1 accomplished. On with the rest of the holiday!!