My first site of LA was from the airplane and it was exactly how I imagined it, a sprawling concrete jungle dotted with palm trees and, from the air, splotches of blue, the swimming pools. LAX is a massive, insane airport with six terminals and I still consider myself lucky to have found the little minibus that would take me to my hotel in Anaheim. The second myth that was true was shown to me on that drive from the airport; the traffic. Yes, the freeways in LA are enormous and the traffic jams are just crazy. The driver told me that there are over 400 miles of freeways in LA, that's a greater distance than the coastal highway between LA and San Francisco - a drive of over 8 hours! I arrived at my hotel in Anaheim, which wasn't located at a walking distance to Disneyland as I'd been told. Well, it probably was if you wanted to walk half an hour in the heat! Luckily, they ran an hourly bus shuttle to Disneyland so it wasn't an issue. I checked in and then went to my room where I met my roommate, Katarina, a Melbourne girl who had flown in that day. After a chat, we decided to book ourselves on some LA tours for the few days before our trip departed. And then we caught the bus to Disneyland and wandered around Downtown Disney, the shopping precinct full of little shops and restaurants. We had Mexican for dinner and a margarita to toast our LA arrival. While Kat slept off her jetlag, I watched the Emmy awards on TV and couldn't believe that I was actually in the city where they were being held and would see the red carpet the next day.