Disaster Strikes

Well, things haven't quite gone to plan.

My lovely new piece of luggage, purchased from my employer only 4 days before travelling, got irreparably damaged in transit. The main zip was completely broken, and torn from the material at least once. Unfortunately, the laptop was in my bag for weight reasons, and it looks like whatever damaged the bag also broke the screen.

So, today is about insurance and carrier claims, trying to make sure that we're covered for the damage and can at least replace the bag before we go travelling next Monday.

What this does mean is that this blog isn't going to work in the way that I initially wanted. I should imagine that once we're on the road, the exciting part of this holiday, it's going to be very challenging to upload content regularly. Hopefully whilst in LA I can get pictures up though - we'll see tonigh.\

So, in the absence of any photos, here's a quick rundown on staying up for nearly 24 hours, travelling back in time, and first impressions of LA.

The flight was long. Very bloody long. Including time spent on runways at either end, it was pretty much on a walkway (hooray for my legs) but was actually a standard seat with my knees rammed into the back of the seat in front. Film choice was pretty good. We started with 127 Hours - I had read the book a few days previously and found it absolutely captivating, although the film itself felt like we were rather disconnected from the story itself and omitted a lot of what I found interesting from the book, the actions of Aron Ralston's friends and family and various official bodies to locate him once he was recognised as missing. Turbulemce certainly enhanced the gory arm-chopping scene!

Toy Story 3 next, which was even better than I had been led to believe. Real tears at the end of the film, a genuinely sad but upbeat ending. We also watched Get Him To The Greek (far funnier than expected), The Social Network (incredibly good, despite a re-occurence of Aaron Sorkin's inability to write for British characters) and most of The Other Guys, which was cut off by the fact that we had to land.

LA had recently experienced flash flooding, and an unexpected side-effect of this was that the clouds were very light around the city, so as we descended into the airport we had rare and stunning views of the surrounding mountains, the Pacific Ocean and Downtown LA.

After sorting out the broken luggage, we went to a restaurant called Gladstone's, a superb seafood restaurant right on the Pacific coast. We got there just as the sun was setting, and I hope I'll be able to get a picture of the sunset up before too long - it was stunning. The food was gorgeous, but once the sky went dark, the effects of being up for 22 hours straight really hit me. A short drive through the mountains to the area of Encino where we're staying later, and we were ready for bed.

So, that was the first day. Tomorrow, hopefully some good news on the various broken things, some picture, and tales of three amazingly friendly Daschunds.