On the Road Again

Trip Start Oct 15, 2007

Trip End Aug 24, 2008

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Flag of United States Los Angeles, California, United States
Sunday, December 2, 2007

We were up bright and early and took a bus to the rental place to collect our car. We were given a free upgrade to a larger car as they had run out of compacts. We loaded our stuff in the boot, made sure all the scratches and dings were documented, then we were off.

We took Route 1 out of San Francisco as it had served us so well on the journey south from Seattle. It hugs the coast for a fair while, taking in gorgeous vistas of Cailfornian coastline, including the famous Big Sur.

W stopped in various pretty areas and took some photos. The photos with the car in were surprisingly hard to come by: we parked up and crossed the road to take a picture of our rental car with a background of the impressive scenery. As Jacob focused the camera, another car pulled up, the occupants got out and stood by our car taking an endless number of pictures. They may or may not have suffered the effects of the curses we tried to place on them, depending on whether either of us actually has any credible curse laying powers.

We stopped for food and toilets at a supermarket. The toilets in supermarkets in California seem to have a rather strange trait in common: they are in the stockroom of the supermarket. Customers are allowed and indeed expected to walk through the stock room to the toilets. Odd.

The journey was beautiful. To be honest, in this case, the pictures probably tell a better story than any number of words we could come up with. We saw lots of nice coastline, then it got dark and we arrived in LA.

We found the car rental place after a fair bit of going up and down the same street. A street with signs for the returns area for National car rentals at each end of it, both pointing to the opposite end of the street, but with no signs indicating that you actually need to be on the next street along. It was a good job that we were so early.

We returned the car and were taken by free shuttle bus to the airport. This was about 10pm and our flight was not scheduled to leave until about 7am, but we thought that as it was quiet, we may as well see if we could get earlier flights or at least start the check in process. As it turned out, it was a very good job that we did, as we were informed "Hmm, yes, your flight has been cancelled..." by the lady/large pile of make up that was manning the check in desk (honestly, the ratio was about 50:50 female to foundation). It wasn't as bad as all that, but we were now due to be on a slightly earlier flight. We asked if there was anything even earlier (we were, after all, already there), and she was able to change us to a flight that would get us to Mexico City about 2 hours earlier. She gave us boarding passes but couldn't check our bags in, so were told that we would have to come back at 4am to do that. Oh, and the airport would be closing at midnight, until 4am. Bollocks.

Fortunately, one of the largest international airports in the world doesn't actually ALL close overnight, just the bit out of which we would be flying. We were directed to the next terminal, where we went and had a meal of our remaining bread and salami from earlier in the day and a coke bought with our remaining dollars and cents, then found a section of floor to curl up on around our bags for a bit of sleep. Unsurprisingly, we didn't find this very restful and were more roused from our daydreams than from sleep by the alarm going off at 3.45am. Bleurgh. Off to our terminal to check in then...