The flight was uneventful. Kind of long. Thank goodness we had picked up subs at Quizno's on the concourse so we would have lunch on the plane. That worked out well! The flight was smooth... got to LA ahead of schedule, but that's where our good airline/airport luck ended.
You know, I have heard all sorts of talk about how big other airports are... Chicago's O'Hare is HUGE, LAX is HUGE... pfft on all of them! Atlanta has it going on. The more I travel, the more impressed I am with our airport. We landed in LA, followed the signs to baggage claim. There are only 3 or 4 baggage carousels!!! Yep, that's it! And the ceiling is open with all these dusty pipes showing... I'm hoping that was the result of unfinished remodeling, though no one was working on it today! There were NO - Zero - Zilch security guards around the baggage carousels. I'm not kidding. In Atlanta, you don't get out the door without a security guard checking that you don't have someone else's luggage. Here, there was no one to ask any questions of or anything. There were no more signs there for ground transportation, so I finally went over to the Frontier Airline office and asked a lady there where to go and she just barely told me to go out front on the street. There are no signs out there either. So of course we ended up standing in the wrong place, waiting for our car rental van. Thank goodness some nice parking shuttle van driver pulled over and told us where to meet our van. We made it to the car rental place and had to wait in line and then had to wait for a car since they only had one car available in the class we chose, and that car was unacceptable to us (The trunk lid was like an SUV so anyone could look in and see our suitcases, etc., break the glass, and have fun.) The car we ended up with is a Kia and I love it. It drives so great. And it will fly! (I mean it seems that it would... not that I've tested it...)
We then drove to our motel (of course, I drove past the entrance the first time and had to go down and u-turn) and checked in. We're staying at the LaQuinta near the airport. It's nice. I've always been happy with LaQuinta. And it's a good jumping off place for the places we are going to visit.
After dropping a couple of suitcases at the room, we hit the road again. Thank goodness for GPS. It's like my cell phone - I can't remember my life without it. She (My GPS is Samantha.) actually took us on the 405 and the 10 (That's what they call interstates out here. Not I-405 or I-10, but the 405... and they're freeways here.), but traffic wasn't bad at all. After a couple of round-a-bouts and a u-turn, we made it to the Santa Monica beach and pier. We walked around the pier and took pictures and then walked down to the water. I got to put my feet in the Pacific Ocean! It was very cool. I just giggled like a child. Picked up a couple of shells - there weren't many around. Left there and drove up the coast on the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu. Beautiful scenery. The ocean was on our left and walls of rock on our right... with houses up on top of that rock! Stopped and ate dinner at a seafood place... I had to have them re-do my meal since they didn't ask me if I wanted cole slaw and evidently they serve it with all meals. Well, that's fine, I can just ignore it or scrape it off my plate, but oh no! They had put cole slaw all over the plate and piled the rest of our food on top! I don't like mayonnaise - UGH! But once they fixed that, the food was excellent. I had the grilled tilapia.
We continued up the coast past Pepperdine University and then we turned around and headed back here to the motel. Came a different way (no freeways) and saw some interesting things. They like their liquor stores out here - we even saw one "Liquor and Deli" place. They also like tattoos. Oh and the strangest thing we saw is that evidently out here it is legal for motorcycles to just drive up the white line in between cars while they are moving!!!! We thought the first guy was just crazy, but then we saw it two more times...so I guess it's an accepted custom out here. It's kind of freaky and dangerous to me!!
Well, our internal clocks say it's after midnight while it's only 9:15 here. But Mom just turned the lights out and I don't think I'm too far behind her. It's been a long day, but I am thrilled that the first day turned out so well. I wish I had taken more pictures, especially of some of the highway signs on the PCH - "Rock Slides next 5 miles" or "Drunk Driver - Call 911" or "Rough Road Ahead" with a "For Rent" sign below it! But with the traffic here, it's not real safe to make sudden stops to take those kinds of pictures. Oh, well.
I hope Hollywood is great fun tomorrow!
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I love to go to different places to see different things :) When I was in Nevada there were burro and turtle crossing signs. First time I had seen something like that :)
Oh, I almost forgot...goat crossing signs, too.
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