Goodbye UK, Hello LA

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Leaving England was actually harder than we thought. We'd been dreaming of our big adventure for so long, and while it was exciting to be getting started, it was sad to say goodbye to everyone.

The plane ride from London to LAX was a sombre one, all of us deep in our own thoughts of what we had left behind. But once we arrived in LA, it was all systems go! We decided (in the interests of saving money) to catch the metro into downtown LA, rather than catching a taxi or shuttle bus. When we had to change trains at midnight in Compton though, we started to wonder if maybe we'd been a bit too cheap. But fortunately it all worked out well and we made our way to our hostel in West Hollywood. We spent the first couple of days checking out LA. Graumann's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, the Hollywood Sign, Farmer's Markets, La Brea Tar pits...it was all good fun. Unfortunately for Ben though, he got some horrible flu-like illness and couldn't really enjoy it all.

After a few days in LA, seeing all the sights, we decided to hire a car and head down to San Diego. We picked up our car, and 20 minutes out of town we got a flat tire. Feeling like this was a bad omen, we had to get our car towed to the aiport rental office (the closest one). We got there, and after a huge wait, we were finally called up to the counter. The lady informed us that unfortunately they were actually all out of compact cars. Was there any chance we would be happy with a convertable instead for the same price?? Ummm.....OF COURSE!!

So there we were - 11pm, driving down the freeway, with the roof down and sunnies on...it was bloody cold, but totally worth it. A convertable car! In California! Perfect!

We spent a day in San Diego looking around, and then on a whim, decided to cross the border into Mexico. Exotic right? WRONG. Tijuana is not Mexico. Certainly not the Mexico that I had envisioned. It's just a border town, where people can go to get cheap prescription drugs without prescription, and to drink tequila. We took advantage of the tequila, but left the prescription drugs alone. Had a very mediocre Mexican lunch (where we got tequila poured down our throat, slapped and then charged money for it!) and then joined the huge queue to get back into the US.

All in all we enjoyed our week, but there's so much more to see in California, it's going to take a few trips to feel like we've seen everything I think. But a week was all we had, because then we were off to Fiji!!

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