Day 2 – LA to Orlando – Santa Monica

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Check-out today was at 10:00amso we were awake at 9:00am, repacked our bags, washed our faces and put our bags in storage. This was really cheap, only 25c for the locker for the day. We used the wifi at the hostel to work out our day, which was to go out to Santa Monica to get some sun. This was to be done by catching the #217 bus heading west on Hollywood Blvd, get off that bus at the intersection of Santa Monica Blvd/Fairfax then jumped on the #704 bus all the way to the beach.
We got off the bus and crossed the road and saw the lovely view of the world famous Santa Monica Pier. We crossed the bridge that goes over the freeway and made our way along to the pier, stopping to take some photos along the way. As the bus trip out had taken a while it was already 12:30pmso we decided to get some lunch at Taco Bell on the pier for the convenience. After, we headed down to the sand for some R&R in the sun. We laid drifting in and out of sleep for a solid few hours before a giant cloud with epic thunder came rolling across. So we packed up our stuff and headed back to the pier. We walked up to the end, took some photos and by that time the sun had already come back out so we headed down to Muscle Beach. We went to check out the exercise equipment and gave some of it a go. Then looked into rollerblade rentals but decided against that as it was the start of the trip, we didn’t want to tempt fate and break something. Then we came across Ben. Bed was an eccentric older guy (apparently known as The Lone Wolf according to Google) who had this USA bike that was covered inover 200,000 rhinestone gems. He told us that each gem had been glued on by hand and went on to explain that it was even featured insome Olympics opening ceremony (I'm yet to find any proof of this). It was pretty impressive though so we chatted for a little before a few others then came up asking questions. We watched people working out for a little bit then headed up the path back in the direction of pier to get some ice cream. I got a butter/pecan frozenyoghurtwhich was amazing and we went up onto the pier to some tables and chairs to sit and eat them in the sun. It was at this point we decided we should start heading back so went back up the main road to where we were going to get a taxi back to the hostel (about $50) but decided to do the bus journey again as it was only $2 per person to get back to Union Station.
This trip took ages, lucky we had time to spare. We had left Santa Monica just after 5:00pmand didn’t get to Union Station until about 6:15pm. We jumped on the red line back to the hostel but Marnee had got herself a little burnt so we called into CVS Pharmacy to get some aloe vera spray on the way. We headed back to the hostel, freshened up as best we could, played on the wifi then left at 8:20pm. Our flight wasn’t until 10:30 and it said check-in closed 30minsbefore departure. So we jumped on the red line to Union Station and managed to just catch the bus that goes to LAX. We were getting a bit stressed time wise for catching our flight. We got there at46minto 10:00pmthinking we still had a good 15mins to spare. We were told by the horrible women from United Airlines that we were too late for check-in because it closed45minsbefore the flight time. We argued black and blue that it said30minsbefore she said "Well, you’ve missed it but all you can do is try going to the self serve and see if it will let you check-in". So we did that, and it said check-in had closed. So we asked another United Airlines staff member she was like "No, you’ve missed it, there's nothing I can do for you" and tried to send us back to the first useless woman who wouldn’t help us either. We stood waiting to speak to her again when along came the legendary United Airlines staff member BillyLahpal. Billy could see we were stressed and stopped to ask us if he could help us with anything and we explained the situation. So, even though we had been told by the two other staff members that nothing could be done he was able to check us in, go figure. We told him we didn’t even care if our luggage ended up on a different flight as long as we got on it. He was amazing and saved our butts! From there we bolted to security, then ran through the airport (like all those people you see on TV) toward our gate. We made it to the gate and they hadn’t even started boarding yet. The flight itself wasn’t too bad, it was just over 4.5hrs. Nick and I didn’t sleep, we just sat and compared travel stories; Marnee managed to get some sleep though.

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