Well, fear not dear readers! Deliverance is at hand, for Zarah and I are now firmly on American soil, living the good life, much as Kanye once said: "It feel like LA."How we came to be here is another story entirely. It takes place over one calendar day, albeit one which lasted about 40 hours.
This is a Qantas 747-400 Longreach aircraft.
Remember it, because it will feature prominently in this tale.
Getting out of Brisbane was easy enough. We got out of the hostel okay, avoiding the Amazonian Teutons who had apparently been angered by someone's snoring (I was alseep at the time, so I don't know who they were talking about). Catching the train to the airport went smoothly, even though it seems as though Brisbane trains get in each others' way a lot. ("Folks, we've just come to a temporary stop. Seems there's yet another train on the tracks ahead of us and we just have to wait for it to move on before we can continue.") Even check-in and immigration at the airport were a breeze, relatively speaking. But our luck did not hold.
The flight was already delayed an hour when we arrived. Okay, fine, par for the course and all that. We made our way to the gate anyway and waited diligently, our Qantas 747-400 Longreach aircraft sitting there, like it was laughing at us. Still, we managed to board only half an hour or so later than we had expected to, which was only 90 minutes after the flight was originally scheduled to do so.
So we got onboard, bound for Auckland. When we originally booked the flight, it had been direct from Brisbane to Los Angeles. Somehow, in the intervening months, the flight decided that it would stop in New Zealand. We got there relatively quickly, and we were lucky enough to have an interesting person sitting next to us. So we got off the plane, passed through security again and went back to the gate to get back on the plane we had left an hour before. The predicted boarding time slipped away by an hour before we got to our new seats. Then we sat on the tarmac for three hours.
It seems planes have containers of some kind of liquid, and from time to time they leak, potentially damaging some kind of radio. This is bad. So bad, in fact, that you have to go searching around Auckland International Airport in the dead of the night for a replacement liquid container thingy before you can take off. After that, it was fine - just 12 hours in the air with all the turbulence and Qantas food you could want.
Eventually, we made it to LAX which is a brilliantly designed airport: all passengers from three large planes pass through one corridor three metres wide and a hundred metres long to arrive at a single escalator. We got to the front of the Immigration line, which produced this memorable exchange between a very frazzled Zarah yearning for a taste of freedom and Officer Castellanos of U.S. Customs and Border Protection:
OFFICER CASTELLANOS looks down at ZARAH's customs declaration, noticing she has said she is carrying 'food'.
CASTELLANOS: What food do you have?
ZARAH: Hot dogs and burgers!
Poor Zarah, dreaming of American cuisine when all she had to do was announce that she took her cheese and crackers from the plane and some Vegemite Snackabouts in her luggage. We eventually got out of LAX, cleared in the end by a cheerful USCBP officer who was familiar enough with Vegemite to know that the only thing it could harm was American tastebuds. ("They made me try that stuff when I was in Perth. It's disgusting!")
We had a long shuttle ride to our accommodation, USA Hostels Hollywood, during which we had a nice chat with a returning Los Angeleno who passed on a lot of travel tips which we have thusfar failed to follow. Our bad. The hostel itself is great - it's clean, it's fun, the staff are really friendly. If it has a downside, it's that it is full of Australians. But you can't choose your neighbours I suppose.
We settled in and checked out the area a little. We're one block down from Hollywood Boulevard, which is great. We checked out some of the lesser stars on the Walk of Fame, ate a hot dog from a place called Skooby's, and a proper meal back at the hostel and headed out for a walking pub crawl.
We went to some great places. First up was Vinolio's, a wine bar/jazz club/restaurant. They had a terrific five-piece band playing, and Newcastle Brown Ale on tap for some reason. We hung out there for a while, mainly talking to our good friend G.B. from Sydney who we'd met a little while before.
After that was the Piano Bar, described as an "underrated gem" by the Los Angeles Times. I appreciated its underrated prices, with $3 buying you a beer. Good stuff. It was here that Zarah made the decision to go drink for drink with me, a decision that would reap comic dividends later. The Piano Bar also featured a band: a three-piece outfit made up of a drummer, a pianist and a very skilled double bassist/vocalist.
After that, as the immortal 50 Cent said, you could find us "in da club." Specifically, Les Deux, which has apparently been featured in the hit MTV series The Hills. Woot. The place was nice, but the cost of drinks increased sharply.
Eventually, we headed back to the hostel, but only for a moment. Zarah was hungry, ravenous, and so I staked our fortunes on a 24-hour diner I could see on our little map. Bravely we set out into the night, eventually arriving at Mel's Drive-In where Zarah proceeded to befriend (or be befriended by) our waitress (Piper from Wyoming) and the security guard (Mr. Security Man from ???). I think we're due back there on Friday to deliver a Vegemite Snackabout to Piper. There's a long story there, one I must tell you some time.
Anyway, Zarah wants to get on with telling the story of the next day's events, which are pretty cool. I'll let her get to it.
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