Down Under

  Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Wednesday, July 15, 2009

I'm in Australia!

And, as Annemiek pointed out to me on Facebook, this means that as of today I have made an entire journey around the globe! In 1991 I flew between Melbourne and Amsterdam, I have since (2002) moved from Amsterdam to Toronto, and now (2009) flew from Toronto to Melbourne. Woohoo! I just did in 18 years what Phinneas Fogg did in 80 days! \o/

In traveling, I lost a day when I crossed the date line. To me, July 14 did not exist in 2009. Good thing I'm not French!
Years ago, my dad missed his entire birthday in a similar manner.

My layover in L.A. was extremely productive. I did the following:
From LAX, I took the free shuttle to the Metro train station (note: this is the "G bus"). There I bought a day pass for $5. With that, you can use ANY bus or train on the Metro network the entire day. I first took the train to Hollywood and Highland, and had lunch with a view of the letters in the hills.



Then I walked to North La Brea Ave, took the bus down to Wilshire, and walked further west to my favourite spot in LA - the La Brea Tar Pits. I saw an excavation in action! Last year when I was here, a tour guide told us about a mammoth they found underneath thenew LACMA parking garage. It didn't reach mainstream media until half a year after that. A year ago, the ground they excavated from underneath the garage was boxed up and waiting to be analyzed, and this Monday I saw two girls working on excavating what they believed to be the skull of a sabre tooth tigre from one of the blocks. There was still a lot of ground that needed to be analyzed - it's very tedious work.



From the pits I knew how to get to Santa Monica, because I did the same thing last year: walk another 2 blocks further west (past LACMA) and take the 920 express bus that goes all the way to the bottom of the Santa Monica pier. I sat on the beach for a bit, and walked into the ocean. Then I took the bus back to the Red Line (trains) and slowly made my way back to the airport.

The flight was long but uneventful, and now I'm catching up on e-mail at my aunt's house. The computer is slow!