We got to hang around our hotel all day. The good thing was we got breakfast for free, so we stole muffins and fruit so we wouldn’t have to go out for lunch. We really were too far away from anything to do anything, so it was good to rest up.

Brendan rang, and let us know that he wouldn’t be able to come see us off (it is quite a drive from his place to the airport). Hannah rang. She was going to come see us before the end of the day, but she was just too sick. But as we got to see her last night, so that was fine.

We got the bus shuttle to the airport, and checked in our stuff.

Ants and I checking in our luggage

Dad rang not long after we’d got to the airport, that’s when I started to feel a little sad.

Our flight was delayed (*sigh*) one hour so we got to fluff around the shops and check out what was for sale. We brought two bottles of 42 Below Vodka (one plain, one Manuka Honey) one for us, and one for our friend Jared who is taking us from San Francisco to Sacramento for Anthony’s geek tournament. We also got some No Jet-Lag pills.

Finally it was time to start boarding. We figured we’d use a few more of Anthony’s minutes, and rang Mum and Amber, who both didn’t answer, so we left a message on their voicemail, and Linky who we bluffed into thinking that we weren’t leaving until tomorrow, and then said goodbye.

Then it was finally time to board. As we took off, I had a little cry. Last time on New Zealand soil for at least two years. We were originally assigned seats in between two people, however Ants asked if we could swap because of his back, saying he’d need to move around a bit, so we got to sit right at the front of the isle which was great because we had heaps of leg room.

The flight itself was uneventful. We had our own TV screens that we could watch movies, TV, or play games on. It was good because we could watch what we wanted to watch, and we didn’t have to look at the big screen in the middle of the plane. Ants and I watched Jumper together. It was a bit of a mission getting it in sync, but we managed it. The effects were pretty good, but the story could have done with a bit more ‘omph’. We also watched American Gangsters, but I was too tired to keep up with the plotline so I gave up half way through. Food was poor, I slept for about 4 hours, and the “No Jet-lag” was incredibly good. It was very weird when the sun rose at 3:30am. We were on the plane for just over 11 hours, and it took us about 2 hours to get through customs. There was no Duty Free in LA which was very surprising.
1:20pm LA time, we got a shuttle to our hotel, which cost us $65. It was very exciting seeing LA for the first time.

We didn’t tip him, and I felt a little bad about that, until Ants found out from the concierge that it should have only cost us $50. We had budgeted ourselves $80 a day, so we weren’t overly worried because we were in LA a day late, which means we had an extra $80.

So we rocked on up to our hotel The Mayfair, which is apparently a historical hotel.

We checked in, and they had to charge Ants’s credit card for €˜incidentals’ just in case. We hope that when they reverse the charge Visa give us back all of the money including the charge for changing money, not just the exchanged money.

The room was small but otherwise good. We were told to buy water by the taxi driver, who also said that if we wanted to go anywhere, we should get a taxi, because the subway system wasn’t that good. We of course guessed correctly that he was just trying to get us to spend money, because we were planning on using the Metro, and we were right to.

We settled into the room, and I had a snooze for 20mins while Ants went down to the concierge and asked him about travel to Universal Studios. He said to jump on the subway and gave us directions. He also said it closed at 7pm so we’d better get going if we wanted to see any of it.

We jumped on the Metro ($1.25 each way – much better than a taxi) and got to Universal City. We rode the shuttle up the very very steep hill, which we thought wouldn’t go that far up (we considered walking it) but were glad we didn’t walk it, because boy, was it a haauuge hill!

Once inside, we picked up our California City Pass which we’d brought before we left NZ for NZ$300. Because we brought it from Universal, they gave us 2 days in the park, plus discount vouchers, and the usual stuff you get with it, like a Disneyland 3 day park hopper, and San Diego Zoo or Wildlife Park and San Diego Sea World.

Universal Studios is separated into two sections, the top section, and the bottom section (down the huge steep hill) and it is joined by several huge covered in escalators, called the SkyWalk. It takes about 5-10mins to go up and down the SkyWalk, and there’s a radio show that plays presented by some talk show people. They do games like “Name this TV theme tune” meant to encourage people to shout out the names along the skywalk and have a laugh with strangers, except that didn’t happen.

click here for larger version

One of the things that immediately hit us, was that everything is huge, buildings are huge, drinks are huge, even Corona’s and Heinekens in bottles/cans are about a litre.

The first thing we did was go down the SkyWalk to the bottom section, and went on the Jurrassic Park River Adventure. It was a boat ride and the boat has speakers in it, so that you can hear the Dr narrating the story as if he was in the boat with you. It followed the storyline of the movie, with it being very calm at the start, showing the breeding area and the large peaceful dinosaurs, then you go past Velociraptor pen which is all broken. You get squirted with water by the dinosaurs that are supposed to squirt poison in the movie, and the boat starts going faster and faster with a few twist and turns, and dinosaurs jumping out at you. As you near the end of the ride, you see the super huge T-rex and you know the boat is going to go under it. The T-rex roars and comes down very close to the boat, gnashing it’s teeth, and you go underneath down a very steep, 15 foot (30 metre) drop. Ants and I were in the front row, and we got absolutely saturated at the bottom, but boy, was it a good ride.

Ants being a T-Rex

The next ride we went on was The Revenge of the Mummy. It was a high-speed rollercoaster ride in the dark with fantastic holograms and strobe lighting in the darkness (not so good for Ants’s tendencies to get migraines from strobe lighting). At first you go super-fast forward around the track, and it feels like you’re flying through the air because you can’t see the tracks. Then you stop really quickly, and go backwards the length of the track, then you stop suddenly, and spin around, and the doors open. Very quick, very fast, very fun.

We wanted to go on some other rides, but the park was closing, and we were too late to go see the last Waterworld show. We wandered around a little more, and took a few more photos.

Don’t just stand there… run!

Capsule used in Apollo 13

“Nom nom nom…”

We walked around Universal City and all the stores. Awwwing at the hugness and glitteryness of it all.

We walked back to the shuttle that goes down the hill, but it was really full with a huge line waiting for the next one, so we walked down the hill back to the Metro.

We were starving when we got back into town, and we found a RiteAid (basically a Four Square) so we brought two ¼ gallon (900mls) bottles of Gatoraid which were short and fat, making them excellent for fitting in my purse. We also brought some water, cereal, milk and muesli bars. We trudged back to the hotel with our purchases, had cereal out of cups for dinner. We had separate double beds, which was weird, but good because then we didn’t have to disturb each other. Sleep is good.

View from our hotel room at night

Current Fashion: Bindfolds
Point of Interest: American’s forces wear guns, customs, police, everybody. Was a little shock to the system.

~~*~~

Extra for the Interested

Universal Studios Hollywood – Home page

Universal City – Wikipedia

Universal Studio’s Theme park – Wikipedia

City Pass – a must if you are going to visit lots of different popular tourist places

Current Mood: exanimate & peaceful & peaceful & exanimate

Tags: America, Auckland, California, Flying, Los Angeles, travel, Universal Studios Hollywood