Chillin in LA

Day 2

Los Angeles-We both slept well. I think that was the result the previous nights of tossing and turning. And after all that planning, I realized I forgot my electronic device charger. I have all the cables I need but nothing to plug them into. We are OK here in LA at the Hyatt, but this will be a problem in Tahiti.

We meet up with Jimmy and Pam and go head to Trimana Grill for some breakfast. I give Trimana five stars for the cost to quality ratio. The food was great and the cost was less than $10 each. I’m not sure whether they appreciated us hanging out for well over an hour just chatting about everything under the sun, but was nice to just relax and have some nice conversation. After breakfast, we took a nice stroll to find tweezers for Pam and a charger for me. Both were accomplished at a very small Target about a half-mile walk from the hotel, but far more enjoyable was walking through Ralph’s grocery store with Jimmy, given his expertise in the grocery business. His insight was great. One of the best finds in the whole store was a bottle of Buffalo Trace for $21.99. That’s crazy! You can’t come anywhere close to that price back home. If our suitcases weren’t already overweight due to wine and liquor brought from home, there would have been another bottle in the old suitcase. By this time, it’s two o’clock and time for lunch. We decided to give a California classic a try, the famous In N Out Burger. The consensus between Dianne and me is that it’s just OK. As a matter of fact, the fries weren’t very good at all. The double cheeseburger was pretty good, but Freddy’s back home is better on both counts. We all wanted to take a break from the long walk for charger and tweezers, so back at the hotel we all chilled in our rooms for a while. By about 7:00 PM, Dianne and I were going stir-crazy, so we asked Jimmy and Pam if they wanted to go ahead and head to airport where we would check in early and take advantage of the Star Alliance lounge, a gratuity included with an upgrade to business-class on Air Tahiti Nui. I don’t think Jimmy and Pam were very keen on the idea but agreed to go with us. In case anyone is wondering, Air Tahiti Nui doesn’t open their check-in counter until about three and half hours before departure. With a 11:55 PMM departure from LAX, that meant we were first in line for about an hour and a half. OOPS! Sorry Jimmy and Pam. You had a much better plan of just chillin’ at the hotel because standing for an hour and a half with nowhere to go, hoping you are in the right line between gates 23 and 28 of the Tom Bradley International terminal at LAX, that just sucks. Oh well, at least we were the first in line, though the only ones in line for business class.

We got our boarding passes in about five minutes, after only waiting an hour and a half and headed to the Star Alliance lounge, a conglomerate lounge for many different carriers that is overpacked, and has an underserved bar. We found a really nice area outside, under the stars. The wind was a bit chilling, but the gas-lit firepits did a nice job of keeping us cozy for the over three-hour wait to board the 787 Dreamliner, my personal favorite. Outside of Pam’s noodles, not much on the buffet line was worth writing about. And the pours were very light as well, I guess to keep the guests from overdoing it before boarding an airplane for an international trip to faraway places. All and all, I wouldn’t recommend standing in an empty line for an hour and a half to be first in line, and last for that matter, to go eat sub-standard sub sandwiches, washed down by cheap liquor, but that’s just me.

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