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After a not so good nights sleep i woke at 4am to get to the airport. i made to to the checkin desk nice and early just in case of a problem, which given my track record of flights on this journey was probably sensible. sure enough i got to the check in desk to be told i was 2 days early and that i needed to contact Quantas to find out more. After a very long and irritating time on hold listening to them tell me how great their service was, and letting me know if i was interested in an upgrade i only need to mention it to the customer assistant and how important i am to them so they would be with me soon all with sickly and repetitive music in the background i was ready to put either the phone, my head or both through the wall. To avoid this i called home for some distraction and support. Finally they answered and got me on the flight, but it cost me $223 for the pleasure :( either way I was on and the flights passed quite quickly with a good number of films watched. I made it through LAX and got the buses to my hostel, checked in and thankfully my bed was free despite it being 8am. It was strange to think it was still 8am on the 4th September as the first time, not even a day ago i was just arriving in Sydney at 8am on 4th september....the idea i have travelled back in time made me smile, despite the severe tiredness that was clouding my mind. A shower and some food put me right (well, as right as was possible) so i walked to Venice beach. It's rather a hole to be honest, dirty, run down and full of homeless people and wannabe musicians and artists....or maybe its a dynamic and diverse collection of people with alternative lifestyles and the first description was just my tiredness talking....hmmm. Either way, I made it to muscle beach to find no one there, clearly 10am on a Wednesday is not the time for pumping iron! I then went back to the pier and got an ice cream, which, forgetting the sizes in the USA was about as big as my head. I took my head sized ice cream and sat on the beach for the rest of the afternoon and had a much needed nap. That evening I made a trip to Subway with a room mate before crashing into bed.
I was woken early because of builders across the road so got up and breakfasted before deciding to join an organised trip to the Getty museum. We all set off with a guide and 2 buses and a tram ride later we got there. A little group of 4 of us, Sarah, Asim, Adam and me started walking around together but we have all been travelling too long and seen too many museums so we were quite quickly bored. Although the views over the city were quite impressive. We left the museum and headed to Beverley Hills, leaving Sarah, a Dutch girl en route to go shopping. As with a lot in LA Beverley Hills wasn't more than an up market shopping street and there weren't any celebrities around that we saw either. So we headed back to the hostel, found Sarah and another girl called Kimmy and decided to go and find some dinner. We went to the pier to a restaurant that was next to a live music event. The intention had been to go to the gig, but it wasn't all that great during the meal so we went for a walk around instead. We made it back to the hostel and after a long chat headed to bed.
Again thanks to the builders it was an early start but the boys had decided to hire a car and invited us along to go explore the city and find some nice beaches. Sarah not feeling too good bailed on us so we were down to 3. Having all seen the OC in our time, Newport beach was on the hit list. We stopped in Venice and Manhatten enroute and after a long car journey thanks to so many traffic lights made it to the beach. By this point we were all getting hungry so headed back towards town, dropping Adam in his new hostel in Hollywood. We then after briefly exploring Hollywood and me winning an oscar (i will explain more/show it to you when i get home) we went to koreatown to meet a friend of Asim's for dinner. The Korean barbecue was a new experience for me, cooking your own food on the hot plate in the middle of the table. It made for a lovely end to a lovely day, made all the better by a surprise 3 week early rendition of happy birthday with a little wagon wheel type cake/biscuit with a candle in it!
Today has been more chilled, again it started earlier than I would have liked because of the noise, but anyway, the 3 of us went to Malibu to chill on the beach. The wind was up so the first cove we found we decided to move on from rather quickly, despite me getting drenched by the waves as we tried to dart around the outcrop of rocks to reach it in the first place! The second beach was a short walk away and was much more sheltered so we spent a few hours there relaxing and I got through a few chapters of my book. Adam was keen to try a burger at the In n Out burger place as its supposed to be better than the usual macdonalds. Having had a Fergburger so recently, I wasn't expecting it to be up to much but thought I'd try one anyway. After a long drive into the city to find one in 'everyone leaving the beach' time, we had a burger, which to be fair wasn't too bad, the chips were like cardboard though! Although I can officially say I've embraced the American fast food thing!! This evening has been a quiet one of packing and blog writing ready for the start of my trek America tour tomorrow. Not sure if ill get a chance to write a blog during the tour, so incase I don't, I'll write again in a week!
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