From the LA Streets to the Bering Straights

We carefully planned out our trip – we would land at LAX at midday and spend the afternoon in the lovely Marina Del Ray.  But Delta had other ideas – why spend a chilled afternoon at the beach / marina, when you can have a 7 hour delay at SLC airport instead?! We received some food vouchers, but I didn’t think it was much considering that in Europe you get food vouchers if your flight is 2 hours delayed.  My boyfriend did his usual act of seeing how long he could read a magazine in a shop before being chased out. It was a long 7 hours!

The good news is we did fly that day, and upon arriving at LAX in the evening, we decided to make the best of it and go to Marina Del Ray as planned.

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Meeting Eggheads in Los Angeles

Before we had left England, I was told that Americans are really friendly. Like, REALLY friendly. They always say “Have a nice day!”, apparently. So to a Brit, that’s really friendly. So when a guy approached us at an LA Metro station, was really friendly, and within 5 minutes had invited us to stay at his girlfriend’s house in Chile, we were perturbed. Was this how all Americans are? Friendly and hospitable, welcoming strangers with open arms and inviting them on holiday? Or was he a drug dealer / conman / murderer? We will never know, as we declined the invitation. How cynical of us.

On the plus side, we lived to see the sights of LA – Mann’s Chinese Theatre, Santa Monica Pier, Muscle Beach.

San Francisco : Tantrums on a Tandem

We flew to San Francisco on Halloween, so the city was full of ghouls and witches when we arrived. Upon awaking the next morning I was alarmed to see a sign saying “This area contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause Cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm”. What the hell?! I was worried the hotel was built on the site of nuclear waste or similar, and was relieved when I found out it was “just” cigarettes. Which is probably the opposite effect to that which was intended!

We walked to the Embarcadero and along to Pier 39… home of the amazing Sea Lions. I have never seen Sea Lions before and I just thought they were wonderful!!

We tried clam chowder in a big bread roll,