Love Los Angeles

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Roughly 2 years ago now, me and an old friend from college decided we should go to visit my cousin in pasadena calif. Partly to see my cousin but also to take in all that Los Angeles had to offer. Within weeks we had booked our flights, no need to book any accomodation! (Its not what you know, its who you know!) Mid august the big day arrived! We started off with a lift from my dad before catching a coach with good old national express down to London Heathrow airport. Minding you I am normally pretty confident with travel but this was my first long haul flight, my first time in the states and first time travelling without my parents to guide me! First part of the journey went pretty smoothly. The usual butterflies came at the same time as the sight of the airplanes landing and taking off from the airport. To make the journey cheaper we had opted for a journey that involved a flight transfer. It was only now that we were wondering if we had made some kind of mistake in this decision! But after alot of reassurance from the travel agents we decided to relax and enjoy! The first flight went absoloutely fine, slight delay but good old US airways ensured we got to philadelphia slightly early! However this is when the problems started. "Ladies and gentleman, we do not currently have an opening for you to disembark this flight so we will have to sit on the runway for a short while". Okay, thats fine. We are ahead of schedule after all... half an hour later. Me and my friend are clock watching. We have just over an hour before our next flight is due to leave, and we havent even moved off of the runway yet! Finally, just 50 minutes before the flight was due to leave we were allowed to get off of the flight. I remember being desperate for the toilet at this point but realaising we really didnt have time to adress this slight problem! In the airport we ran to transfer our bags onto the next flight. Waiting was painful! With just half an hour to go we collected our bags and ran them to the transfer belt, throwing them on. Recieving several disgruntled looks from airport staff. Thinking that we were free to make our way to the gate we hurried off. Only to run into more security checks and a waiting line that seemed the legnth of the great wall of china! Thanks to me making a panicky fuss one of the security gaurds let us skip the line and run to our flight with only twenty minutes remaining and the airport putting out announcements saying that our flight was on its final call and the gates will be closing. It was so frustrating. I felt like shouting, we are here you know?! Thankfully we managed to get to the flight 15 minutes before it was due to take off. To make things more annoying we then sat on the runway for an hour as there was a backlog of flights waiting to take off! Now how is that for unfair?!

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