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Before we left Melbourne, Mia and I went and ordered a coffee at Hudson's. While we were waiting I noticed a Qantas pilot waiting for a coffee too. I said to Mia, "We better Venice to that man, he could be flying our plane!" Mia scoffed and said "Be quiet Mum, you're so embarrassing!" Well, as we were waiting I turned to the pilot and told him what I had said to Mia. He said in a Canadian accent (which I thought was American... my bad) "Where you headed?" and I said "Los Angeles, on QF93", and he said "I Am flying you there!!" We had a little chat, grabbed my coffee and met with Chris and the boys. I told Chris of our meeting the pilot, he didn't believe me until we saw David (that was his name) walk past - I called him over and introduced him to Chris and the kids - after another small chat David was nice enough to invite us and the kids up to the cockpit after the flight!!
We arrived in LA at 6:30am. We didn't get much sleep at all on the plane - virtually impossible unless you can sleep sitting up!!!
We took the kids to the flight deck to see the cockpit, business and first class areas - they were super excited!
We were very surprised to see that the airport was not as busy or scary as everyone told us it would be. We made it through the preliminary customs automated screening, then lined up for the second screening with an actual customs officer.We were super nervous, the customs officer looked so serious. He asked Chris questions like, "Why have you come to our country?" "Have you got family here?", "What do you do for a job?", how long are you staying and have you planned your trip?" At the stage of the interview process he still didn't crack a smile! He asked Mia who I was and Mia said "She's my mum", didn't ask Luca anything. When he got up to Jacob however, he looked at Jacob's passport photo and said "Sorry young man but this photo doesn't look like you!" Jacob smiled at him and said "That's because I'm smiling now!" This made our Customs officer laugh!!! Thank God! He welcomed us to the country and wished us all the best.
We took a shuttle bus to our apartment building, it was still only 9 am at this time so couldn't check in until 2pm!! At this stage we were all super tired, luckily Pierre & Jo's apartment was available sooner, we left our bags in their apartment and took to the streets of Hollywood.
We got as far as McDonalds before we had to put our curiosity to rest and try a Big Mac - much to our surprise it tasted exactly the same. The only difference was the drink and fries sizing! They small was the same size as our large drinks and their small fries was the same as our large!
We ate and realised that we were all extremely tired! We were getting very impatient with each other and snapping at each other! It felt like we sleepwalked back to the apartment.
We ended up sleeping from 1pm through to 6:30 pm! We were so tired!
Once we woke up we went down Hollywood Boulevard to find something to eat. We finally chose Baha Fresh which is a Mexican Restaurant. They lady behind the counter seemed pretty impatient while we were deciding what to order ... It was the same at McDonalds too! They are either super grumpy or look like they don't have time to wait for us to place an order. I found this quite odd as everyone we spoke to prior to coming said that customer service was amazing! I guess if we were at a sit down restaurant it might be different - we'll have to wait and see.
The people that we have spoken to on the street seem really nice- they love Aussies!
There were many street performers on the strip - dressed in costumes and asking us to take photo's however they are pretty clever because once the photo has been taken they ask for a donation!! One man put his cd in front of my face and asked me to listen to his music - which was good, when he said you can have my cd but for a donation, I told him I didn't have a CD player - he snatched the cd out of my hand and moved onto the next person.
These people are desperate for a buck. Kind of sad really.
We were walking back to our apartment and a dark guy was walking past saying stuff like "I'm a murderer, I will kill your f***in asses. You should all be f***in dead", however not sure if he was saying that to us or the police who were there also. Either way Mia and Luca were pretty freaked out.
We went to the local Food Mart to get some things. I found that healthy food was far more expensive than bad food. For example, a loaf of bread costs minimum US$3.80, however cereal (fruit loops, coco pops) costs US$2. Alcohol and cigarettes are cheap as!!! A bottle of Smirnoff that would cost us AU$60 costs US$15 here, and smokes can be as cheap as US$3.50 a packet!!! Not sure why people here have drug problems when drinking alcohol would be much cheaper!!!!
All in all our first day was an eye opening experience - for a country that prides itself on being superior to all others, I can honestly say that Australia is definitely the lucky country - we need to ensure that it stays that way. We get looked after pretty well back home.
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