Arriving in L.A.

Well, I'd say NEVER AGAIN!!  But we all know "never" is a long time.  But seriously - is it as long as a 14 hour flight???  I've never had to sit still for so long before!  The seats were cramped, the plane was chokka full, only a slight recline (which was also a blessing, because it stopped the person in front of me going onto my lap I guess!) the meals were awful - god, i think the tiredness has turned me into a moaning myrtle!

Ok, the positives - there were a LOT of children and babies on board, and thankfully not a single meltdown!  Well, not within my earshot at least!  And the entertainment console was pretty cool too - had a great choice of movies - watched Keeping the Distance, Boy, Bridget Jones Diary, a few episodes of Mike & Molly, and a few other things, and listened to some decent music, played a few games.  All in between trying to sleep and pretend we were already on LA time to help combat the jet lag!!

However, the sleeping was the biggest problem.  We were all really tired, but it was just so hard to get comfy.  I'm used to sleeping sitting upright in a chair (thank you night shifts!) but I have to have my feet up to do it, i just can't sleep with them dangling.  So most of my problem was simply that I couldn't put my feet up - they really needed a foot rest at the very least on that plane!

Oh well - we survived, and arrived in one piece in LA!  First impression of LA......sand apparently! (read on!)

We were sitting in the middle three seats of the aircraft (so 3 seats, the aisle, our three seats, the other aisle, and the other 3 seats)   So we didn't have a window seat unfortunately, and our view was extremely limited.  I finally caught a glimpse out of a window and saw a pile of very tall looking buildings.  I said to emily - oh look, i see it!  She looks at the window and says "it looks like sand".  Huh??  Ummm, emily - you're looking at the wing.  Try looking out the *other* window!   HAHAHA

Because we had to juggle our carry on luggage and we had it on two sides of the plane, we thought it best to just wait until the crowds disappeared.  Which worked well - we were the last off the plane though!  But that caused the next problem, we get off the plane, and the place is empty!  The 400 odd people on the plane certainly disappeared pretty quick!  We had no idea where we were going or where everyone else was.  So we followed the maze of corridors - all completely empty - and then finally, turned a corner and stopped.  Literally a wall of people all waiting in line to get through immigration!  Oh look, we found the rest of our passengers!

So the next 45 minutes is spent in a slow moving line waiting our turn to speak with the immigration officers.  Nothing like seeing a bunch of guys wearing guns around their waists walking up and down the area to make you feel slightly intimidated!  Thankfully no problems this time with our passports - just a few quick questions to make sure we weren't planning on becoming illegal aliens - and we were on our way!

So here we are - we made it!  We're finally living our (ok, MY) dream.  All the stress and dramas have been so totally worth it!  We're happy, we're smiling, but by god, we are so tired!  I could sleep a week! :)