Los Angeles - Day 1 ✈️

Well I’m going out west where I belong…

This blog is brought to you by Barry.

As the discordant chorus of phone alarms woke me from my slumber in the bland but comfortable surroundings of Premier Inn Terminal 4, I stirred with the knowledge that there would be many hours and many, many miles until I would next be in bed. And yet, an early start for a holiday is better than a regular start for anything else, so with that mantra in our heads we were washed, dressed and on our way ready for 7am.

It was only a short journey to Terminal 3 and our cases were soon disposed of. The lady checking us in was quite amused by the disparity in our packing styles and weight of suitcases - noting that mine was clearly the one that all our souvenirs would go into. Security took a little longer, for one of us at least, I have a sixth sense for identifying slow, elderly Americans that will hold up a queue (and there were a lot this morning, with half the population of Cleveland seemingly milling around Heathrow after visiting London for the NFL) but Ellie sadly did not follow my lead in choosing a line and was stuck for a while behind all the Chucks and Barbaras.

We grabbed a light breakfast from the quaint French bistro known as Pret A Manger and settled down to wait out the time until we boarded in the quieter area of seats away from the hustle and bustle of the terminal. This placed us in front of the Burberry store, which is an endless source of fascination to us every time we fly from this airport, simply because we’ve never actually seen anyone buy anything from it. This time we were amazed to see two potential customers enter the store, but despite the best attempts of the salesman they both left empty handed. I imagine the till would open in a cloud of dust if ever used.

Eventually it was time to get on board, which again took no time at all. We settled into our seats (we had two of the middle three of the plane), and as usual Ellie immediately made friends with the other person sitting next to her. New pal Les had an even longer journey than ours ahead as he was a Cruise Ship engineer bound for Hawaii, so was immediately jumping onto another 5 hour flight to Honolulu upon arriving in LA. Their budding friendship would be cut short once in the air though as it was a half empty flight and Les was able to move to his own row.

We toasted our holiday with celebratory G&Ts as the plane started northwards over Scotland. I’d consulted ChatGPT over the best sleeping strategy to ensure I was alive and alert as possible once landing in California. Our new robot overlords recommended that I try and get 4 hours of sleep starting around 4 hours into the flight, so I watched a couple of films to pass the time (Presence and Drop, if you’re interested, I would highly recommend the former) while tucking into an early lunch. The pasta we were served was fairly uninspiring but thankfully Virgin made up for it with a regular stream of tasty snacks throughout the rest of the flight, the Cheese & Onion Toastie, Chocolate Magnum and then Scone with Jam & Cream just before landing made sure we’d both waddle off the plane into the US of A.

I don’t sleep too well on planes but managed to grab a couple of short naps that were interrupted by my body being in pain due to the odd shapes I’d twisted myself into in my seat. Still at the least I managed to remain ‘powered down’ for the AI-recommended amount of time and still had the opportunity to check out another movie before landing (Heart Eyes, inappropriately gory for a plane and therefore right up my alley).

Entry into the country itself was relatively smooth despite the horror stories that have emerged since a certain President took charge. Our border guard was thorough but friendly and we were soon heading to collect our bags from Carousel 7, which had been announced on the plane as the location where our luggage would emerge. After a few minutes of standing there I realised that this carousel was only dispensing bags arriving from Tokyo, and the London flight was instead over at Carousel 9. This caused a lot of confused passengers, only worsened when the bags stopped arriving entirely due to a jam in the system. Luckily our flight had landed 45 mins early so even with this delay we were making good time when we left the airport to hop on the shuttle bus to Alamo car rental.

The area around LAX has changed significantly since we were last here, with lots of construction underway to prepare for the 2028 Olympics, including a shiny new Metro station which confusingly has been built around a mile from the airport. Picking up the car was simple enough although I did

have to persuade them to not give us the gigantic SUV they’d initially intended as I’d been warned that the parking space at our Airbnb was particularly tight.

Despite LA’s traffic being pretty infamous the drive was nice and simple. When leaving the airport you’re initially in Inglewood, one of the city’s ’less salubrious’ areas (all together now ‘Compton, Long Beach, Inglewooooood’) but these roads soon gave way to palm trees-lined streets and soon we found ourselves in the familiar surroundings of West Hollywood, only a stone’s throw away from where we’d stayed four years ago. The parking space at the Airbnb was as narrow and challenging as promised but with Ellie’s expert guidance and direction I managed to manoeuvre the car into its new home.

The Airbnb itself was clean, bright and spacious, with probably more room than all other Airbnbs we’ve stayed in put together. We had some time to unpack and shower before heading out on foot to get some supplies from the nearby Trader Joe’s. On the walk down I was hit by the realisation why I love visiting this place so much - the skies were blue, the sun was warm (but not too warm) and there were so many exciting adventures to come. I’d live here if I had access to the multiple millions it’d require to own a home, but for now I’d have to settle for our temporary lodgings and a feast courtesy of America’s best supermarket.

Neither of us had felt like heading out again so we had some pizza and spicy chicken nuggets from frozen along with some salad. After this we’d intended on trying to stay awake by watching something on TV but Ellie was particularly flagging by this point as it was 3:30am back home so we decided to get an extra early night. I tried to stay awake by starting this blog, but the tiredness soon hit me and it descended into gibberish so I decided to to abandon it for the night and hit the hay shortly before 8pm.