Not too many hours later we were woken up ready for our marathon day of journeying across continents. As we were connecting from our Perth-Sydney flight straight onto a Sydney-L.A. flight we had to check in internationally to begin with in Perth. This meant us arriving 2 hours before the flight (as instructed by Qantas only a couple of days ago), but when we turned up no-one had even got to work yet! We were left sitting around for a while wondering why exactly it is that you have to check in earlier for internationals than domestics . . . . . . we still haven't come up with a good answer. We both managed to fill our time though, Megan by labelling every single one of our bags and me by helping a lady download files from her laptop to her phone. She'd been trying for 6 hours and I did it in about 10 minutes!
The flight itself was fairly short at just over 4 hours, 3 of which Megan slept soundly through whilst I sat and watched films . . . . . again! On arrival in Sydney we were lucky enough to be on the correct side (again!) to see a good view out the window. We flew in with a spectacular view of Sydney Harbour and the city. The weather was crap but at least there was a good (final) view of Australia. We didn't have to wait long at Sydney Airport before we boarded the jumbo that would be hauling us across to America.
One of the strangest things about our trip was that we crossed the International Date Line going from west to east. This meant that we were transported back in time to start the day all over again. We were in the strange scenario of simultaneously having the shortest and the longest day of our lives! It was the shortest because we boarded and took off from Perth in the dark and saw sunrise well on our way to Sydney, then promptly jumped on an even faster plane to try and get back to the darkness as quickly as possible (for us on Perth time it was dark by about 1pm!). And it was the longest day because we crossed the International Date Line therefore making us start over again pretty much. In theory (sorry if this confuses you, I'm incredibly tired and jet lagged writing this, it might not be true but it's how I'm seeing it at the moment!!!) we left the comfort of our beds at 2am 3rd June and are now going to bed at 9pm 3rd June (not such a long day) but in reality it is now 10am, maybe even later, 4th June for us. A confusingly long day!
The best thing about our flight was the people watching opportunity. People watching is great normally but in a confined space for 13 hours it can be pretty funny. For example the guy across the aisle from me who went for the tactic of sleeping for the entire journey aided by no less than 6 mini bottles of wine (they have almost 2 glasses in each!). This made it quite comical when the girl sitting next to him needed to go to the loo which, unfortunately for her, was quite often. He wouldn't wake up and she had to use immense gymnastic skills to get past without booting him in the face. The guy next to Megan slept the whole way but with really loud jazz music playing through his headphones, plus he looked dead. But the real winners were the 2 in the row behind us. They didn't know each other at the start of the journey but boy did they by the end!! There was a spare seat between them but that didn't last for long as they got chatting and the guy invited the girl across for a drink. Long story short, the both got incredibly pissed and snogged the rest of the flight away in a very unattractive, noisy manner. Most amusing!
When we had arrived in L.A. and cleared security we got to our airport hotel, the Radisson LAX and checked in. It;s a bit special here. We have an amazing room with 2 double beds, en-suite obviously and loads of space. Not quite like the rooms we're used to, it got us imagining how our trip would have been if we stayed somewhere like that the whole time! We decided that we had time 
to do one thing whilst in L.A. so we made that a trip to Hollywood! A taxi there cost us $50, it wasn't as close as we had thought, but it was worth it. We walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard, saw the "Walk of Fame" stars and the sign on the Hollywood Hills. We even got in a bit of shopping. For our trip back we decided against the $50 cab and instead got $2.50 train tickets! It took ages longer but it was definitely worth it to save the money. We're up early again tomorrow as our flight has been moved 45 minutes earlier and also because LAX are so fussy we have to check in 90 minutes before a domestic flight. The alarm is set for 5am, fun times!!
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