A day and night in the City Of Angels.

"We'll miss our connection." The girl muttered to me as we sat slouched in our chairs at Melbourne International Airport.
I glanced her way with a questioning look, but she wasn't talking to me, she was talking to her friend, a young guy in a black baseball cap sitting opposite us. With a sigh, I grabbed my bookmark, unzipped my pack to stow the material away, and rubbed my eyes. When I've read the same paragraph twelve times and still can't take it in, I know it's time to give up trying to read.
It had been two hours, and still no sign of the missing flight attendant that was causing our boeing 747-400 to sit motionless at the departure gate.
"Silly bitch." the guy said, and stretched his arms behind his head with a yawn, signaling that he was probably as tired as I was.
I closed my eyes and eavesdropped for a while. I couldn't read, and listening to people talking was both more interesting and less energy-consuming than talking myself.

There were about twenty of them. All from a university in Boston, all part of a swim-team which every third year is treated to a training camp in Australia.
After a few minutes the conversation turned to someone they knew named 'Toad', and I lost interest hearing about his Tasmanian exploits, and went to get a juice. After purchasing it the announcement on the PA system told me that I had just been offered a 'refreshment' voucher from the airline - mentally striking myself for not waiting an extra minute, I went and sat in the cafeteria nearby, once again taking out my book. This time I got a full three sentences further than my last effort before the PA system boomed into the bustling terminal and announced that we were now boarding.

Coincidentally, after locating my seat I found myself sitting next to the girl from the gate lounge (who's name I discovered was Carina), and a brief and stilted conversation ensued. She didn't seem to like flying too much, and she didn't even tell me that, the large fluffy toy penguin she clung to during take-off confirmed it.


The flight itself was painless, I love flying and looking out the window is, for the most part, entertainment enough. Luckily I'd also loaded The Temple Of Doom and a few episodes of Battlestar Galactica onto my iPhone however, so even if option A got tiresome I wouldn't be stuck reading the passenger safety card in the seat-pocket in front of me.

When we finally landed, I found that Carina's prediction had been right. Despite the five-hour layover we were supposed to have in LAX, we'd arrived so late that my connecting flight to Vancouver had already left.
After two more hours navigating through the sea of bleary-eyed travelers at Customs, and the baggage re-check station, I finally spoke to someone about my situation. The lady informed me that the other two flights to Vancouver that day were both fully booked with waiting lists, and that the only possible flight was the next morning. Glancing at the time, I decided that a night in LA was the lesser of two evils, and I had no intention of hanging around the airport another 8 hours 'on-call'. Something told me that the 7 passengers ahead of me on the waiting list for the fully booked flight weren't all going to suddenly leave.

After arriving at the hotel, I threw my bags on the bed, and decided that I still had half a day to explore the city. Where better to start than Santa Monica Boulevard?

The cab ride was pricey but worth it, it was a beautiful warm day despite being winter, and the beach would be a welcome change from the airport any day of the week.



The Santa Monica pier was bustling with hundreds of faces, out enjoying the afternoon sun, I reasoned that this must be because for once the LA skyline was blue instead of orange, but as well as taking some snaps of the pier and the ferris wheel, I had another reason for coming here. A tingle ran through me as I took out my iPod and hit the display. A picture came up of a beach, palm trees, and shops lining a wide-sidewalk. My favourite album, despite having an illustration as the cover, depicted this beach, depicted Santa Monica. I'd wanted to see if it was real since I'd heard 'Holiday From Real' the first time.

I clicked my earphones in, started the album, and set off down the beach before the sun slipped below the horizon, on the same sidewalk I'd looked at so many times in that picture, off to explore the City Of Angels.

Jimzip :D