Once again we are airborne. Currently flying over some unidentifiable chunk of coast, who knows how high up. Presumably it’s US coast as we’re only an hour and a half into our four hour flight to Mexico City. It’s going to be 7:30pm when we get to Mexico City, we’ll be catching a bus to our hostel as it sounds like the best option. The subway is apparently dotted with pick pockets, and taxis are happy to rip you off. So bus it is! It’ll be an interesting experience getting around Mexico City as it’ll mostly be via bus. I’m curious as to how Callum is going to cope as he detests catching buses anywhere back home.
Last time I left off we had one day left in Los Angeles and we were going to hit up some shops, Universal, and maybe a movie. We didn’t get to see a movie but we did do some shopping and see Universal. We started the day waking up early (6am, I know I’m impressed with me too – yay for jet lag!) and taking an Uber to an IHOP that was close to the shops we wanted to go see. Put IHOP’s $2.99 unlimited coffee pot to the test. The percolated coffee wasn’t actually that bad. But then again, I’m a tea drinker at heart so what would I know about good coffee? After stuffing ourselves with eggs, bacon, and pancakes we went on a nice 20 minute walk to the shops to work it off. On the way we got distracted by a giant rock and stumbled across the Tar Pitt Museum. I wish we’d had more time to go exploring but the hordes of school children was a little off putting so we put it on the To Do List for when we eventually come back to Los Angeles.
The shops I don’t really have much to report about. Except if you are planning on heading to LA and want to do some shopping my suggestion going for a stroll Melrose Ave as it has loads of interesting and intriguing shops. We started on Fairfax and worked our way up to Melrose, Fairfax has a few shops but I found Melrose more interesting. Beyond dragging Callum into a make up store we mostly hit up men’s clothing and shoe shops. I’m not sure if it was the area we were in or just the shops we went to but all the shops were so expensive! We saw a lot of shoe stores (sneaker stores really) and most of them had their shoes vacuumed sealed in plastic. It was a weird experience handling a plastic covered $8000 shoe. Some even had shirts and clothing in their own little cleaner bags. Which, if I was inclined to spend a jaw dropping amount on my clothes and footwear, would be annoying as a customer intending to buy. Half the fun of shopping is feeling all the different materials, how are you supposed to do that if they’re wrapped in plastic? Also why are they wrapped in plastic? Surely the display copies, if sold, would be discounted anyways because they’re display. So why bother wrapping it?
Enough about clothing. Universal was, well, a theme park. There were characters wandering around, a surprising amount of children for a Monday (school holidays, damn it), long waits for rides, and expensive food. We drank butter beer in Harry Potter world and explored the park. We took the studio tour which was pretty cool. Got to see some sets, saw the JAWS mechanical shark, experience a 3D “roller coaster”, and a crash site containing a real plane that the studio bought for a film, and saw Falls Lake. Falls Lake is a giant hole that can be filled with water that backs onto a bright blue back drop. It’s how a lot of movies shoot oceanic shots. Very interesting.
Then we did the usual theme park sort of stuff until we tired ourselves out and headed back to the B&B for our traditional pass out in bed at promptly 8pm. Then it was an early trip to LAX, a long boring wait in the airport (probably got there a little too early), and now here we are on the plane off to Mexico City.
That’s All Folks! Rachel
Travel Bee 