After a busy day at work yesterday, and spending the afternoon and evening getting packed and sorted, Lachie arrived at our place at around 10pm.
We hung out for a bit and played with Hendrix before he went off for a snooze.
Darren and I finished packing the bags (Jack and Jill were excited to be brought out of hibernation) and tidied the place up a bit for Lachie, who will be house/cat sitting while we're away.
When we finished, we got about a 30-60 minute nap on the couch before getting back up.
A quick peppermint tea and play session with Hendrix (and a reluctant headbump) we headed to the car and Lachie drove us up to Tullamarine Airport.
We got some maccas breakfast while we waited for check in to open, then got our first taste of US border control, with a confirmation of everything and proof of visa, accommodation, return travel, etc, and we haven't even gotten out of Melbourne yet!
I'm so excited for the process at LAX. . . .
But we got through, (the guy was actually quite nice and helpful) went through security, (via Darren's random-not-so-random drug & explosives test) found our gate and relaxed for a while.
Easy boarding process, we have this down. Why line up when you can just wait til the end?? :P
Then up into the clouds as the sun is slowly rising over the horizon.
Such a vibrant red contrasting with the black silhouette of the planes wing.
But 'red in the morning, shepherds warning' so I'm glad we're heading towards Summer.
After an hour in the air we landed in Sydney, and made our way to the transfers lounge. The shuttle bus came about 15 minutes later and we jumped on the bus to the international terminal where we chatted with a lady who was heading to Wellington for a violin retreat.
We got to the terminal, which took a lot longer than I expected, then headed towards the gate.
We filled out our departure card with a borrowed pen (you'd think pens would be provided when every single person has to fill one out..) then lined up for customs.
The line didn't take too long, and the official who processed us was pretty funny. He asked me what a chef likes to cook, and, on the spot, I said everything. So he asked me what I like to eat, and again I said everything. Darren outed me for being vegetarian, so he started joking saying I just lied to a customs official!
He told me I wasn't allowed past, and as he let Darren through he sneakily passed my passport with his over the gate. It was a pretty funny exchange.
So we got through there, then headed through security where Darren wasn't selected! . . . I was. Haha. The official there was also a funny guy and up for a joke with us, as he scanned me. He was telling Darren something like that he was making sure I was good enough for him.
I got an A+, and we headed on through.
We made our way through to the gate, and got our passports and boarding passes checked again at the departure lounge, where once again, the officials were in a fantastic mood. The guy there had a joke with us as well, saying something along the lines of Darren being lucky to have a wife like me. Haha. And making sure with me that he was a nice man.
Seriously, so far it's been the easiest process. I don't know if everyone was just in a great mood, or that it was so early that they haven't had time to get ****** off with ****** customers yet, haha!
By that time, we didn't have long left to wait, and in no time we were boarding the plane, heading to Los Angeles!
It was a long and uneventful 13 hour flight. We watched the latest Hobbit movie, which we've been meaning to check out for a while, the spent the rest of the time alternating between watching movies, snoozing and eating. My meals came out first every time too, cos I'm special, but they must have put me down for vegan meals instead of vegetarian meals, but that was no problem for me.
This flight was a little bit ********* me than I remember the last long one being, and there was a point not long after the halfway point where I was feeling a little ******, but in the end we made it.
We got off the plane and made our way through the very empty airport towards the US customs and border control, where we were fully prepared for a long and arduous process, but were pleasantly surprised by a short line and an extremely nice customs official, who had a chat and a laugh with us about our plans and scanned our passports and fingertips, and we were through in just a couple of minutes!
We walked through the airport, exited the last security check where all we had to do was say we had nothing to declare and were waved right through.
Every single person we talked to through the whole process was super nice and up for a joke, from Melbourne to LA. It was so easy and one of the cruisiest stress free travel days we've ever had. Probably helped that we were the first flights leaving and arriving, so everyone was fresh for the day.
We went out to the taxi rank and found a cab to take us to the hostel.
The driver was an old Armenian guy who was up for a chat as well, telling us all about himself and his country and his time in the US.
Not long later we arrived in Venice Beach and went up to the reception where we dropped off our bags before heading out to see the place. It was only about 8am so there was still a bit of time to kill before check in time.
We headed off for a walk along the Boulevard towards Santa Monica where we were met with a very different picture of LA than we expected.
It was quite dirty-looking and the only people around were the multitudes of homeless people sleeping or just hanging out by the footpath. It was actually crazy how many people were sleeping on the street, it was a little disturbing. I don't remember seeing so many impoverished people, even in some of the poorest Eastern European countries that we visited.
So we walked along the Boulevard anyway, and absolutely nothing was open. The only other people around were the exercisers. We thought we would find a coffee shop somewhere, but everything was shut. We eventually asked a girl who had a coffee where she'd got it from. We were pointed up the street a bit so we headed up there where we found a little cafe called Dogtown Coffee, and got ourselves some caffeine. It was a really nice coffee, and they'd won awards and stuff for it, and micro-roast it on site, so it was a pretty good find.
After the coffee we kept walking up towards Santa Monica and walked up the road there a while. By this time it was after 9am but everything was still closed. Maybe it's a city where its good to sleep in! We had some time to kill so found some breakfast/brunch at the one place that we found that was open, which looked a little dodgy but had quite nice veggie tacos (and Darren's turkey burger was nice too), then kept walking.
We got another coffee at a place called Philz Coffee, which was a mistake as it was filter coffee, which I'm not a big fan of, but at least it was caffeinated!
Eventually it was nearly 11am, so we made our way up to the music shop, True Tone Music, where we waited another 10 minutes for it to open, while chatting to a guy out the front who seemed to want to tell us everything he knew about music theory. I didn't even mention that I already knew everything he was saying, because my brain was not up for theoretical discussions at this point! So we listened to him go on for a while then the shop opened and we were able to get the pretty 12 string mandolin that we had ordered and bought a few weeks back. We got a little room where we had a play around with it for a while, which was pretty cool. It might take some getting used to though, with its tiny mandolin frets!
After a while there, we were chatting to the guy who sold it to us, Chris, and he mentioned that his band was playing a gig that night, so maybe we have something to do already!
We thanked him and left, heading back down towards the beach with our new toy!
We got down to Ocean Avenue, and waited for the bus back to Venice, chatting with a girl from Chicago, who was in town as a film making intern.
The bus came and we jumped on, for just a dollar each, and headed back to Venice Beach, chatting with a couple of ladies who were traveling with a little girl, who actually filled the stereotype of the "loud-crazy-black-american-women". :P
We got to our stop where we walked down to the hostel and got checked in. It was still early, but thankfully, the room was ready, so we went upstairs and went straight for a snooze.
A decent amount of hours later, we woke up, feeling much better and Darren had a play of the mandolin for a while, and I was able to get an awesome photo from our window. There was a flock of birds doing circles around the sunset that seemed to almost want me to get the perfect shot. Then when I got it, they all stopped flying and landed on the roofs of the buildings.
So while I was just relaxing and using the wifi, Darren was playing around with the mandolin, and while tuning it down one of the strings snapped!
Now we're going to have to go back to the music shop tomorrow! Oh well.
We watched the sun set from our room, and listened to the sound of the streets. The beachfront was going off. There were people everywhere and the atmosphere was just buzzing! Such a contrast to the bleakness of the Boulevard in the morning!
We slowly got ready to head out again then ended up leaving at about 9:45.
We walked down the street towards Marina Del Rey which took us about 30 minutes or so, and arrived at the pub, Brennen's.
We said hi to what we thought was Chris from the music store, but it turned out to be a random with the same hair.
Then we went up to the bar where we met up with Chris. He was so stoked that we had come to his gig, and was introducing us to all his friends and band mates while we got a beer together. After a while he had to go off to set up for the gig, so we went and had a chat with the guy-who-wasn't-Chris whose name was Javier.
We hung out and watched the band who were actually pretty good.
They had a lot of fun on stage and swapped around with their instruments on every song, which was pretty entertaining.
Afterwards we hung out with the band as well as another guy named Ryan, who was in a reggae band, and had many more drinks with everyone!
Eventually we ended up across the road at an IHOP (American pancake place) at about 3am.
We got some pancakes (I got an omelette) and had some more convos with everyone there, then at around 4:30 we jumped in on Chris' ride home and got dropped off back by our hostel, where we went straight up to bed.