Enter California

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After not having a chance to get any sleep before our shuttle arrived at 4:30am, we were off to LA. (Note to self: don’t take a big load of washing powder into LA as they think it contains enough oxidant to detonate or something). In fact the security checks on this domestic flight from Hawaii to LA were far more strict than the international flight from NZ to Hawaii (apart from the finger print recording and mug shot photo they take of you). Going to LA we were even asked to take our shoes off in case we wanted to blow our feet up I guess.

Due to some fancy flight sharing system with Air NZ we travelled on American Airlines where the flight attendants were slightly more rotund and motherly than the typical tall, slim, young type I was used to. We were also required to pay for our meal ($5 American) which I decided to skip but the others went ahead and got it. I was glad I didn’t as it just ended up being a dry bagel and some lovely American cheese and crackers.
Sunita and I were both so tired on the flight that we were actually asleep before the plane even took off - and we cannot remember the plane taking off, that was pretty impressive I thought, considering the noise and vibrations there must have been.

Coming into LA was drizzly and cold. I couldn’t see much more than a mass of concrete and what would look like oil refineries and miscellaneous factories. Maybe the “city” was somewhere else.

We waited for an hour for the shuttle to our hotel in noisy traffic and cold drizzly weather, but it never ended up arriving (maybe we were just impatient as we needed to get to Crystal Cathedral). Sunita’s friend Josh ended up picking us up and due to our masses of luggage we also needed to hire a cab. That was the first time I was able to say “follow that car” in a cab. Wicked.

We dropped our bags off in our hotel (nicer than the Hawaiian one and much cheaper) and piled into Josh’s car to head to Crystal Cathedral. Unfortunately I did not take any photo’s of Crystal Cathedral as I forgot my camera (my mind was not quite with it due to mass sleep loss) - but the place is amazingly huge, and since we managed to get there in time for the evening service we were able to hear the pipe organ in action, great sound - unfortunately no choir though, would love to go for a morning service when the place was packed.

Ended up having dinner at an Italian restaurant called Macaroni Grill where the waitresses write their names backwards on the table cloth. They also play Italian lessons in the rest-rooms (Graci?) and give you lots of free warm bread before the meal (which seems to be fairly common thing to do over here).

Back to the hotel (raining the whole way), watch TV which was going on and on in the “Storm Watch” segment about a storm over California - mud slides, houses washing away etc. We were quite surprised because it was really just drizzle outside, something like we would have in Auckland for months at a time without anything major go wrong. I think they are just not used to rain at all over here, so when it does, everything floods.

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