Saturday 27th September 2008

[08:57 PDT]

Time to start packing for our trip home.

[19:07 PDT sort of]

I'm writing this from the aircraft as we fly somewhere over the western US. As I look to my left I can see the rich orange of the sky caused by the now-set sun.

It'll be dark very soon.

This morning was the usual mad rush to get things packed up and leave the room before check-out at 11am. We managed it by 10:55!

Now we were out of the room, we had seven hours to pass before our flight took off at 6pm that evening.

We took the opportunity to make one last pass through the shops. Stopping at the "Block at Orange" for half a hour.

Our next stop was to travel back in towards Hollywood and visit the Griffith Observatory, which is high up on one of the hills overlooking the Hollywood area.

It wasn't easy to find - TomTom seemed determined to take me up a road which was closed off. I had to double back on myself before it finally decided there was more than one way to the top of the hill.

The view was spectacular from the top of the hill, however, most of LA was covered in a low mist/smog as which got worse the farther you looked.

A few things were visible from where we were - including the Hollywood sign, so we took a couple more photos with that as a backdrop.

Finally, we wandered into the observatory itself to have a look around.

They have lots of exhibits there and a couple of shows too - one is the main show in the planetarium. Sadly, the timings for this show didn't fit with our schedule.

We did manage to see a verbal demonstration by a couple of (slightly eccentric) guys who demonstrated how to make a comet with 'everyday' things! It passed a half hour, but left Linda slightly bemused - or perhaps that was fear for her being surrounded by so many nerds!

Personally, I enjoyed the show, but I was more interested in seeing the inside of the Leonard Nimoy auditorium where the talk was being held.

We left the place soon after and drove (for ages it seemed) down to LAX and the car rental return place.

*** Newsflash ***

I've just got the iMap thing working on the in-flight entertainment. It seems we've just flown over Las Vegas - only another 8 hours, 44 minutes to go!

*** ***

It Dollar rental return was extraordinarily busy - even with three people collecting the cars, they were arriving faster than they were processing them. This left us with a fair delay to get processed. However, there was one up-side to this, they didn't bother checking the vehicle for damage.

Since day 1, our car has had what looks like a key mark along the passenger side. I actually think it's a mark from a passing tree that got too close when someone was driving it. However, I've no way on knowing whether it was there when we picked it up or whether it was caused by an over enthusiastic Yosemite shrub.

We'd picked the car up in a dark underground car-park and although I did glance over the car, there's no way I'd have seen anything without going out into the daylight. However, there's nowhere straight forward to stop and check the car on Hollywood Boulevard, so the first time I got a chance to really look at the car, we had stopped just outside the national park for a couple of supplies at a local shop.

However, the rental guy just jumped into the car, checked the miles count and printed me out a receipt! It'd been playing on my mind that I might end up with problems over the car, so that was one less thing to worry about.

By the time we'd got the shuttle back into the airport terminal, re-arranged the luggage (having changed into UK friendly clothes) and gone through security, we only had 15 minutes before boarding was due to start. In the end, we needn't have worried as we actually took off at 6:35pm, about 35 minutes behind schedule.