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5am is an insane time of the morning to wake up! It was still dark outside and, whil ethe rest of the condo slept soundly, we three gathered our stuff and crept out heading towards the Greyhound station for our 7am bus. We were out so early because we had been told to arrive at 6am to check our bags and we figured it'd take us at least 30 minutes to walk with all our stuff. We were far wrong, arriving about 5:50am and being third in the queue. There was no one at the counter when we arrived so we figured they'd turn up at 6am to start checking us in . . . 6:30am and still we were waiting, no one had a clue what was going on, the queue was now about 25 people and we were starting to get pissed off. 6:40am the manager showed up appologising that the morning girl hadn't turned up and begins to check us in. Its kinda shocking that it took 2 hours to notice that someone hadn't turned up, but hey it worked in our favour as it saved us $30 in extra bag feed as they didn't bother charging us. They also didn't weigh them either which was annoying as we'd spent so long trying to balance out the weight. After this we dragged ourselves and our bags to the queue to get on the bus. Note the theme of the morning here - queuing. Soon enough we had handed over our bags and grabbed the seats at the back fo the bus so that we all had space to half lie down and fall asleep - a travel sickness pill each and ipods in ears we proceeded to do jsut that!
There isn't much to say about the bus ride as most of it was spent asleep. We stopped a couple of times and about 30 minutes before we reached LA we all surfaced and decided to eat our food we'd bought the night before. Soon enough we were pulling into the LA Greyhound station, reclaiming our bags and walking through the terminal in search of a taxi. Can;t say I rate the bus station particularly high on its helpfulness, the signs sucked and finding a human was impossible so I grabbed a telephone directory and called for a taxi, soon discovering that there was a rank just out of sight of the station entrance. We were convinced our stuff wouldn't all fit into a normal taxi but what can only be described in Harry-Potter-magicesqueness our bags and cases fitted and we headed towards Hollywood and the hostel.
The drive was about 20 minutes or so and things caught our attention as we drove by getting a little excited as we went. Soon enough we weer outside our final hostel and heading inside. As it was still quite early we couldn't check into our room so we stashed our luggage and went for a little explore for food and to kill some time. We wandered along Hollywood Blvd, checking out the walk of fame and a few of the shops as we went along. We bought our postcards and then ended up in McDonalds as nothing else took our fancy.
We were all pretty tired so really didn't feel like doing much so headed back towards the hostel to see if we could check in yet so we could drop off our stuff and go in search of a supermarket. Thankfully our room was ready and so we checking in and headed to check it out. The room was AMAZING, it was like a hotel crossed with a uni room. We had our own shower and toilet, a bunkbed,. a mini fridge (with water and mints to welcome us) and a huge flatscreen TV with cable. Seriously awesome - oh yeah and air con too! We almost never wanted to elave the room. Once our eyes had returned to their sockets we retreaved our stuff from the luggage storage and out came Elphie (my laptop) to look up our nearest Ralph's (yes we are addicted) and the easiest way to get there. Magically we found one on Hollywood Bvd and a bus that would take us right outside so we headed off, armed with backpacks and other bags to make our shopping easier to carry as I intended to pick up everything food wise people had asked me to bring back.
Off we went, eventually finding the right bus stop, and as soon as we were on the bus we were outside Ralph's in about 10 minutes. We headed inside, grabbed a trolley and proceeded to stock up on food. We were supprisingly focused sorting out enough food to make packed lunches for the next three days and feed ourselves in the evenings too. We also decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream and a small box of Lucky Charms to eat for breakfast. Once we'd filled our trolley we headed to the checkout where they were supprised that we wanted to pack our own bags and were soon back on a bus and headed to the hostel.
The hostel had an all you can eat BBQ happening that night which we had decidede against so the kitch was beautifully quiet allowing us to cook (a veggie lasagna and potatoes) in peace. It was at this point, while putting away our food, we discovered that, unlike San Diego (the hostels were part of the same chain) the LA hostel didn't have a freezer so we were going to have to put our ice cream in the fridge and eat it that evening (if it survived until then). Dinner was rather delicious and having filled our tummies we headed upstairs to our room to shower and chill our before heading to bed. Although our ice cream was more like milkshake by this point we managed to eat a fair bit of it before putting it in our mini fridge in the hope it might survive for another day. After that we pretty much spent the rest of evening chilling out, checking up on life on the internet and then crashed as it had been a very long day and we had an early start in the morning!
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