Day 36 - Manhattan, NEW YORK to Long Beach, CALIFORNIA

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Well according to the Stepz App on my phone we have walked 62 km over the last 4 days around NYC so that is a new record. We were collected from our driver who was right on time and we headed to JFK airport for our flight to Los Angeles. The drive took about 45 minutes which is what we expected.

We are flying with American Airlines today and arrived approximately at 8.45am and had a bit more than 2 hours until our scheduled departure time. Checking in our luggage was simple and we were through the security checkpoint quite quickly and we were at our gate by 9.30am and we have not experienced any of the delays here you keep hearing about on the news at airports.

Just after we boarded there was a lady near us who was not looking so well and has the good old the vomit bag in her hand and was panting pretty hard and one of the airline stewards came down to talk to her. It was the most compassionate thing I’ve ever seen from airline crew as she asked her questions about her travel plans and got her focused on positive things to look forward to the flight. She got her ready to fly by helping her with anxiety and before she came to assist it was looking like she was going to have to get off the plane and seek medical assistance so hats off to this American Airlines steward for a great job.

The flight left early in the end and whilst we were scheduled to arrive at LAX at 2.12pm (it’s a 5 hour flight) the pilot announced shortly after take off we were receiving favourable winds and would arrive around 1.30pm (noting the 3 hour time difference between east coast and west coast).

I kept busy on the flight as we had free wifi and entertainment. The plane was configured 3 + 3 and originally we had window seat and middle seat but when we got our boarding passes we changed to aisle seat and middle seat to make it easier to get out if necessary.

It was a smooth ride and before we knew it we were there at LAX. It was a bit of a journey to get to the baggage claim carousel but eventually we found it and all bags were accounted for again which is always nice to see . Similar to the previous flights we had 2 large checked suitcases and 2 smaller suitcases we used for carry on along with my backpack.

On our Qantas flight was we had 32kg of checked in luggage capacity and only 7kg carry on so the challenge was keeping carry on within 7kg limit as we always keep things like our cameras, noise cancelling headphones, both iPads and any items that can get damaged in the carry on. However for this flight it’s the complete opposite as we have only 23kg of checked in luggage and no weight limits on carry on so we had a bit of reorganisation to do.

One of the reasons we put the heavy cameras in our carry on was a result of a bad experience on one trip we did several years ago when a camera was wrecked when we arrived at our destination as the temperature was too cold where they store the luggage.

We had not been sure how best to arrange a transfer from LAX to our hotel in Long Beach which is about 35km away. We eventually settled on using the Super Shuttle service we have used at airports before. However on this occasion they redirected our booking to an executive car service and we had a private transfer which was great.

Our instructions on the booking were to collect our luggage and head upstairs and go on the LAXit shuttle to the LAXit waiting area and meet our driver at Bay 20A. Well it was a bit hard to find where to get the free shuttle but we got there eventually and I was able to get in touch directly with our driver as we arrived at LAXit (which is pronounced as LA Exit). This is a new initiative to be a common collection area for Taxi’s, Uber, Lyft and Super Shuttle too !

When I booked it online the fare was quoted as $74.75 including booking fees and taxes so I was happy with that and we had a good driver who had come from Thailand 20 years ago. We would definitely use this service again as our driver said they only do transfers from or to the airport.

We are staying at another Best Western Hotel near the convention centre and the welcome from reception was the worst I have seen as he was just disinterested and did not even tell us about the hotel facilities or breakfast schedule.

I went for a walk around the nearby area and it’s really clean and feels safe. I found a supermarket called Vons which was huge (probably double what we have at home). They had two aisles alone that were full with bottles of wine. Kerry likes her Rose (actually I’ve been known to like it too !) and I noticed they had a good selection with over 20 to choose from. My main goal however was to buy some cold and flu tablets as Kerry is a bit under the weather today and I guess the sudden cold weather snap we had in New York has been the factor and they had a good selection in the pharmacy section of the supermarket and I will likely be back here as we are allowed to take on a bottle of wine each when we go on our cruise in a couple of days time (as long as we drink it in our cabin).

Hence we decided to have dinner close to the hotel and we are blessed for choices as when I walked back from the pharmacy / supermarket I was checking out the area and there are at least 8 restaurants in our block. In fact our hotel is on a corner block and the other three corners all have restaurants.

We settled on a Mexican restaurant called the Long Beach Taco Company and we had an alfresco table as the weather here is nice and warm. The food was delicious. Tomorrow we get to spend the day exploring Long Beach as we have not been here before.

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Photos

The Welcome basket in the fridge when we arrived
Yes that’s right everything has been eaten (in fact this was all gone by Day 2 but I chose not to take photo until today !).

This is the MetroCard we used to access the subway
It can be used for buses as well but we did not use them. It won’t work for ferries though as they are on a separate system.

Bus stop in Long Beach
This was right outside our hotel and so nicely decorated with ceramic tiles that they made it look nice instead of an eyesore !