Day 1 of our excellent adventure!

Well, we're sitting in the LAX (Los Angeles) airport, fighting off sleep so we will hopefully sleep on the plane on our way to Melbourne. I’ve managed to pick up a network connection and am killing some pre-boarding time posting to the Blog. Our flight out of Toronto was uneventful except American Airlines is certainly a bare-bones carrier, you get nothing for free. The plane, a long in the tooth 737 had seats with all the cushion of poor lawn furniture and the leg room of Massey Hall balcony seats - before the renovations. I had to splay my legs if the person in front of me put the seat back. We rode at the very back which was fine until everyone started using the only two bathrooms right behind us. We got in to the L. A. Westin around 10:00 their time (1:00 AM our time) and gratefully hit the sack.


Today the adventures started. Because our internal clocks were off by 3 hours we were up and at breakfast around 7:00. We checked out, stored our bags with the concierge and hopped on the L. A. Big Blue Bus which you can ride half way across California for 75 cents. Not only that the bus drivers are friendly and will even give directions and call out stops for you! We headed to the sea, where the ‘sun comes up on the Santa Monica Boulevard’. It was cold and gloomy however we did have the odd bit of sun peeking out during the day. Santa Monica is beautiful with the immaculate sandy beaches at least 400 meters deep between the bluffs and the sea. You can look up and down the coast to the mountains and the view is beautiful. The sand pipers were scooting along the beach digging up mussels and the pelicans which have no fear of humans were gliding overhead or simply standing on the pier human watching. We hiked out to the Santa Monica pier, rode the world’s only solar powered Ferris wheel and visited the little aquarium tucked under the beautifully restored century old carrousel at the base of the pier.

From there it was past muscle beach where we tried a little working out all the way down to Venice Beach. Venice Beach is seedy, exciting, bohemian and just a great walk. You can get anything pierced or tattooed and spend you days happily drifting from head shop to Kush shop where we were assured that the medical marijuana was perfectly legal and a doctor on site would even prescribe for us. Art was everywhere. It was for sale, on the buildings decorating the buildings and washrooms along the boardwalk and even the palm trees were painted with graffiti.

After walking literally all day we’ve headed to airport and are waiting to board our 15+ hour flight to Melbourne. So far while there has been a bit of squabbling and some complaining we haven’t killed each other. We’re not excited about the flight but very excited about being in Melbourne Monday morning. We’ll write again then.

Steve