We’ve been planning this trip for about a year, and are both really excited to be spending some time together. Even though we live together, there are weeks where we hardly see each other due to work constraints. Spending six weeks non stop together is going to be wonderful. Hopefully we can still stand the sight of one another at the end!!! The way I see it, if we can survive camping in the heat in Africa for over a month, this will be fine!
Mum and Gab (Rob’s Mum) drove us to the airport. We flew Virgin Australia overseas for the first time and were pretty impressed. The plane was really clean, the seats spacious and the meals pretty good. Unfortunately I copped the one person on the plane that slammed their seat down the second the seatbelt sign disappeared. They weren’t even sleeping! Luckily I don’t take up much room, but it was still annoying.
The flight was a bit over 14 hours. I watched ‘Ride Like a Girl’ first. What a wonderful story about overcoming gender stereotypes, as well as a serious fall. I was still living in England when Michelle Payne won the Melbourne Cup in November 2015, so I didn’t know too much about her beforehand.
Then I watched a few episodes of ‘The Crown’ on Rob’s iPad. I kept trying to sleep, but had no luck for quite a while. Unfortunately in the weeks leading up to us leaving, I’ve had some inflammation around my sciatic nerve in my spine. This has meant I’ve had pain radiating into my back, hips and right leg. While it’s definitely improved, sitting on a plane for hours on end didn’t exactly help. So every time I tried to sleep I just couldn’t get comfortable. As well, we had two ladies to our left talking extremely loudly, and a kid screaming (not crying, screaming) three rows in front of us for most of the flight.
What did keep me entertained in the meantime though (aside from ‘The Crown’) was a cool incidence with the international date line. I watched the map and we went from Thursday to Wednesday to Thursday to Wednesday to Thursday to Wednesday (crossed it five times!), all because of the irregular juttings out along the IDL. As a Year 12 Further Maths teacher (time zones are in the course) I thought this was really interesting, and couldn’t help but take a photo of the map. I’ll definitely be mentioning it to my 2020 Year 12s!
Eventually I somehow managed a few hours of sleep, but poor Rob didn’t sleep at all. We were very glad when we began our descent into LA.
The immigration queue at LAX was huuuuuge, but we lucked out when a lady randomly came to our section of the gigantic queue and told us to head to the US side as there was no queue. A few minutes later we were through, cases in hand.
We caught an Uber to Santa Monica and left our cases at the reception of our hostel. This is my third time in Santa Monica - once with Mum, Dad and Adam in March 2005, and once solo in January 2017. We are straying at the same hostel I did back then. It’s good value and the location is awesome.
We set off. Rob bought a SIM card, and we had a quick look around the downtown shopping area. Then we headed to the beach and walked along the pier. It had a completely different atmosphere to when I visited earlier in the day in January! While I absolutely love having school holidays, this time of year EVERYONE is on holidays. It was busy with lots of people, music and street artists.
After a look around the pier and taking in the sun and clear views, we walked to Venice Beach. I reenacted the photo of Adam and I on the gym bars again, I swear they get higher every time I visit!! Just as I remembered, the Venice Beach area is what you would get if the Gold Coast and Amsterdam had a baby. We inhaled lots of second hand smoke (yuck!) and saw lots of “interesting” people milling about. We hit a wall once we arrived to the muscle beach and basketball area and sat for a while. Then we had a look at some graffiti in some back streets before catching an uber pool back. We were so tired that we just couldn't face the walk!
We are now in our private hostel room which is cosy but has everything we need. We are going to buy an early takeaway dinner soon before a very early night of (hopefully) good sleep. We are up at 5.30am tomorrow to head down to one of my favourite places on the planet - DISNEYLAND!!! Can you tell I am excited!? It's my fourth time visiting (this will make three visits in Anaheim, and one in Hong Kong), but I still have that childhood excitement feeling. Can't wait to share it with Rob.
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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