It was Christmas morning 2024 and we were up reasonably early, we kick started the day with some yoga and a unit of Duolingo, well I did, Christine had a bit of a sleep in. We ate a hearty breakfast of wontons and cereal and then packed the last few pieces of clothing. Around a week from now I would decide that I did not need all of the clothes that I had packed and life would have been easier with just a bit less. Byron drove us up to the airport and we called mum, dad, Josie and Paige on the way to wish them all a merry Christmas. 

We met up with Luke at the check in screens, went through the checking process and made our way down to the boarding gate. The security screening process was a lot easier having learnt some valuable lessons from our Philippines trip. Luke went off to find some breakfast while Christine and I chilled with the gear.

The flight to Los Angeles was long and tedious, a few elements separated it from the Philippines flight. One, they provided us with meals and water, the meals weren’t massive, but they were a damn sight better than nothing. Two, Christine had organised sleeping masks that attached to the seat to hold your head in an upright position. These worked really well and meant that I could sleep a bit without getting a cricked neck. Three, the seats all had video screens with a large selection of movies to watch. I read my book for a while, slept for a while, watched movies for a while, slept a bit more, moved around the aircraft to do some air squats and a bit of stretching on a number of occasions and generally passed the time. 

We had to change planes in San Fransisco. The following process dispelled any lingering myths, after the second coming of trump, that I had about the United States being an advanced nation. We joined a large line that went through customs, this would become synonymous with anything to do with the US, we collected our bags, we took them to another drop point, we went through another security screen and then we raced to the gate to catch our connecting flight. The flight itself was fairly straight forward, I slept for most of it and they even gave us more water. 

The bag collection at Los Angeles was smooth and we had no trouble getting an Uber. Did I mention that it was once again Christmas morning and this time it was winter. We dropped the bags at the hotel where we were going to stay and then wandered across the road to a Starbucks so that we could organise Wifi and so that Luke could have a coffee. While I was there I picked up some of the most expensive water I have ever purchased in my life, each 600ml bottle cost $8 AUD. 

We wandered down to Manhattan Beach to see if we could find some food. We found the beach and checked out the epic waves that were pounding the giant peer that juts out from Manhattan Beach. After a bit of searching we found a pub that was serving reasonably good food at reasonable prices, if you are earning $US. 

After lunch we went for a walk along Manhattan Beach and checked out some the houses and facilities that are dotted around the beach. One thing that struck us apart from the little flags that are erected in the front of most of the houses supporting their preferred sporting team, was that everything was eerily quiet. Most of the houses, and there are a lot of them, appeared to be empty and devoid of life. You would expect that Christmas Day there would be people around chatting, laughing playing games. Not so for Manhattan beach along the beach path there were hundreds of people walking up and down the beach, but the vast majority of the houses appeared to be empty and quiet, like a giant display village. 

We returned to the hotel, showered off and then went to track down some dinner. Now before I move on I need to mention that the US is a lot older than Australia and as such many of the buildings are older. The hotel where we were staying was no exception. We quickly worked out that the exhaust fan in the bathroom appeared to have been added as an afterthought and didn’t actually extract to anywhere, as such when you ran the exhaust fan and had a shower all of the steam simply went into the exhaust fan, condensed and then dripped back out. This wouldn’t be a huge problem if it wasn’t located above the loo meaning that the person sitting on the loo received a cold shower from the condensed water in the exhaust fan. The best thing to do was shower with the door open and the exhaust fan turned off. We ended up at a Thai place that was not far from the apartment. The food was delicious, however as with anything converted to American dollars from Aussie dollars, it was expensive. This would plague us through the trip. The conversion from Australian dollars to US dollars is a killer for us.