City of Angels, City of Traffic

I made it to LA!

So I arrived in LA at around 2:30pm, and went through customs. That is not a walk in the park, I think he must have asked about 100 questions, and was really suspicious about the fact I was travelling alone. I was asked what I do for a living, when I said I was a student, he got really aggressive about how could I have afforded this trip. I tried explaining that I do temp work and he wanted to know details of the last 5 jobs I've had, what I did, what company I worked for, how long I worked for them. Then it was what my parents did, their dates of birth, whether I've ever lived in another country, exactly what I'd be doing in America (like day by day), my return flight details, if I'd be meeting up with anyone, when, if I was renting a car, how I was getting around when in LA and so many more.

I was exhausted after a 11 hour flight and was struggling with finding words and was trying really hard not to get flustered about the constant quick fire questions, especially as a lot of them got repeated again, worded in a slightly different way, randomly mixed among other unrelated questions, eg. "Are you renting a car? how are you getting around LA? What hotel are you staying in? What date do you leave LA? Where are you going afterwards? How are you getting there? What was your last job? What are you doing on your trip?"

The Airport

Not fun.

Free Shuttle Bus from the Airport

Then I had to wait for my bag, which also took ages. When it finally came out, it was upside down so it was a challenge to pick it up and the conveyor kept taking it away so I had to keep dragging it back again.

Then I made it out. I had to pop into the loo first as I hadn't changed into my summer clothes and I was boiling, so I went and did that, put on sun cream and then tried to find an information desk. There wasn't one so I walked out to the street to see if I could work out which bus I needed to get. I couldn't so after 10 mins, just asked one of the drivers of a shuttle bus that stopped. Apparently I needed that shuttle to the LAX City Bus center - and it was free too! I finally got over to the bus station and missed the bus I needed by 1 minute because I was still trying to drag my suitcase over so I had to wait 10 minutes. 

LA!

I needed to get a travel card but there was no info desk or ticket machines there either. I got the next one that went to Aviation Station, but I didn't have anything smaller than $10 on me and I didn't realise that you have to have the correct change for the buses. I was trying to work out whether it would give change, and the driver was like "Don't go putting thaaat in there. You gonna need something smaller. Don't you have a dollar?" I tried explaining that I didn't have any change yet, and she was like "Well how you gonna get on a train?!" She let me on anyway, but it made me really nervous.

When I got off at Aviation Station, there were ticket machines so I paid $26 for 7 day Tap Card. The machine is crazy fast and times out after about 5-10 seconds of inactivity, which made it really hard as I wasn't sure exactly what I needed at first.

Next it was the Green Line metro train towards Norwalk, and I got off at Harbour Freeway/Transit Station and changed onto the Silver Line bus. This is where it all went wrong as I asked the bus driver to tell me when we got to 1st Hill. He then asked me where I was going and told me he'd tell me when to get off. I went and checked again about 15 mins later about where to get off and he said it was probably best to get off at Figueroa/7th and take the #2 from across the street. I did have the #2 as one of the buses I needed (just a bit later) so decided to listen to him. Just as I was getting off I said "So it's #2 from over there?" and he was like "Yeah, #2 or something like that from somewhere over there" (waving indistinctly in a general direction).

So then I walked "somewhere over there", and there wasn't a #2... so then I spent 30 mins trying to work out where I was and how to get over to my hotel. There are no signs or maps on the bus stops - like a map of the city showing which buses go where would have been really helpful, but there was nothing. Sometimes there is a bus route for a specific bus but if you don't know what roads go where it's really not helpful.

After asking someone in Starbucks and several other passing bus drivers, I decided to just walk up the road. It turns out I literally needed to carry on walking up the road a bit and get the #60, and then cross the intersection and get either #2, #4 or #704 along Sunset. 

Sunset Boulevard

Finally made it and arrived at my hotel! (Thankfully it was right by the bus stop). Annoyingly there was no sign above the door that you had to go through, or a path from the 'sidewalk' so it took me a few minutes to work out how to get in. But I made it! It only took 3 hours from the airport. Only just over an hour more than it was supposed to...