Travelling Cross-Country

Once we arrived at MIA, we made our way to this place called the 'Admiral's Club'. It is an airport lounge for customers of American Airlines. It's definitely not the cheapest thing ever but it turned out to be awesome for us that day as a place to get away from the busyness of the airport.

The two seconds there was no one in the lounge.

The lounge includes computers, a snack and drink bar, and full-service bar, bathrooms (cleaner than the normal airport bathrooms), and even showers. It's a pretty sweet deal. While we were hanging out there, we did hear a few complaints about how crappy the Miami lounge was compared to LAX, so we couldn't wait to see what that one looked like.

Movie watching

The flight was pretty uneventful. We did wish we had known that they provided blankets and pillows on both of our flights, as we could have saved a lot of room in our carry-on.

Flight trackers rock 

Once we arrived in LAX, we tried to decide if we wanted to just hang out in the lounge or leave the airport and tour the city since we had about 8 hours to kill once we got back into the terminal. Luckily the lounge offered to hold our carry-on luggage for us, so we snagged a rental car and hit the road.

Cruisin'

 LA roads suck. At least, the ones we took did. They were all full of potholes and uneven surfaces and some of the ramps we took made me fear they would collapse at any time. Has anyone else ever been to LA? Is this part of the reason traffic is so bad?

You can't really see it because of the smog but there are mountains out there

Having come from South Florida in the morning, the breeze blowing in was quite chilly. This did not stop about half of LA from making their way to the beach in only their bathing suits.

 We were concerned about time, so we only made a quick drive over to Venice Beach. Our goal was to find that place you always see on tv where people are rollerblading down the boardwalk. We found way more than that.

To the beach!

Apparently you are not supposed to walk on this part

Muscle Beach = South Beach on steroids

Why anyone would want to work out with sand to contend with is beyond me

Basketball courts

Toes in the Pacific Ocean for the first time

I don't think you can see it- This is my 'Shit, this is cold!' face

Why are some many people in the water?!

There was an area of the beach for every type of group you could envision- rollerblades, skateboarders, b-ball players, Muscle Beach, surfers, even artists and knitters. It was an interesting way to pass the time.

We headed back to the airport to make use of the much more awesome lounge.  I tried to take a picture of the Tsunami evacuation signs on the way back to the airport but it was too blurry. They look almost identical to our Hurricane evacuation signs.

We got to take showers, which was so amazing after having already been traveling for 12 hours. The bathrooms were cleaner than any hotel I've ever been to. I was so excited about the bathrooms that I forgot to take a picture of it before I used it.

We spent another few hours in the lounge having a drink or two and relaxing. The picture below is only of one section of the lounge at this airport- they also had dark rooms with theater-sized screens, a business lounge, and behind me in this picture is an area where you can use headphones and listen to music.

Much sunnier than MIA

When it was time to head over to our flight to Sydney (!!!), we had to take a shuttle from the terminal we were in to the international terminal. The international terminal was HUGE and yet it felt strangely empty. Probably because it was open air for like 4 stories.

Note the truck next to the turbine

That's our plane for the flight! Anyone else feel nervous just looking at it?