Leaving LA

Stefan Barrett — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:55:09 GMT

Left LA yesterday (or was it the day before - you cross the internation date-line on way back), and was not the most impressed about either UA (who I flew with) or the airport itself.

Arrived about 3 hour early, and went to self service check in - they are obviously saving money by automating as much as possible (yes cheaper flights are nice, but..). Check in started pretty ok, the machines were pretty easy to use, but then the process sloweded. Because of my nationality and destination, an 'agent' had to check the passport. After waiting a little while one of the people who where handling queries, luggage, etc. (est. 1 person per 10 machines, they were busy) came over and informed me that 'agent' would have to check passport (they were just normal mortals) and there was currently no agents around.... By the time 2 'agents' showed up about half a hour later, possible as much as half of the machines had people waiting..

After waiting about 40 minutes, an 'agent' looked at my passport, gave me a ticket and I headed off to passport check.. Only to discover that I had been given the wrong ticket, one for another person who's surname started with the same 3 characters.... Life.. Luckly it only took a couple of minutes to get a replacement ticket - jumped the queue and went straight to the 'agent' who had issued the original.

Went back to passport check/x-ray/etc. only to find a longer queue.. In LA, like some other places in the world, you have to take your shoes off so they can be x-rayed seperatly - and there's not much space to take them off, or put them back on again - everything is as cramped as possible. And, of course, the x-ray machine broke down just before I went through so we had to wait another 5 minutes while they got it rebooted (not sure of OS). Once through all of that, I discovered that all the delays were not really a problem, since there was very little to do while waiting for flight home - I guess I'm a bit to used to being in international airports which tend to have more shops and restuants as opposed to airports servicing mainly locals.

Ahhh well, it's just another 7 weeks, or so, until I fly again - it's Christmas time again

Back home

Stefan Barrett — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:11:46 GMT

Well, that was a fun week but it's nice to be home through got to go into work tomorrow. Might have changed teams while I was away .

It's interesting comparing LA with Tokyo -Toyko has more people and may be bigger, but LA is more spread out. You can walk a lot further in LA without seeing anything than you can in Tokyo.

LA does have a metro but it does not cover much of the city, so assuming you have no car, you switch to metro busses. Part of the problem is how spread out LA is - I don't think I've ever got on a underground train, which for part of its journey travelled above ground; part of the time as a normal train and part of the time as a tram travelling the city streets.

The bus network does seem to cover most of the city, but was a lot more confusing for a tourist than most undergrounds are.

Compared with Tokyo which has a hugh Metro and JR [main line train system] network. This makes it easy to get around central Tokyo (which is like the entire LA area, but compressed). One point LA's favour was that it was a bit cheaper to buy a daily travel pass ($5, approx 500 yen) through it looked like extra payments might be required in some cases.
Tokyo does have a bus network as well, but never tried it - partly because have never needed to, and partly due to the language. All the metro stations I've seen have signs in English (as well as Japanese of course) - including the station names.

Another difference was not so good; in the week I was there I observed a car crash (bad enough that some liquid was pouring out the front of one of the cars) and saw two people fighting. I also got asked for money a number of times (through to be fair that's happened in every US city I've been to, and used to happen in London as well) and once somebody tried to buy something from me - didn't try to clarify.

Ahh well.. Went to a pizza place in downtown LA where they had some quite acceptable pizzas - apart from the toppings they had a honey wheat dough that produced a very nice base.

Visited Long Beach and walked along the beach for a couple of hours - quite nice.