One Year Away

Penny

Early Monday morning, we said goodbye to our friend and amazing San Jose host Alan and we hopped onto a train that would take us to Los Angeles.  The train ride lasted 11 hours and we finally arrived in LA at 9pm.  We had first considered going to a late movie and dinner to kill some time before our 7:40am flight out of LAX.  But after listening to the advice of our fellow train travelers and taking a look around the train station, we decided that the best and easiest option was to take the shuttle to the airport and spend the night there…

Due to the early departure time (which would require that we be at the airport at about 5am), we decided that getting a hotel room would be a waste.  Therefore, for the first time in our lives, we decided to sleep in the airport.  We had researched this a little on a website that tells you all you need to know about sleeping in airports around the world (www.sleepinginairports.com ) The reviews on LAX were not the best but then again a few hours in an airport never killed anyone.

When we arrived at the airport, we quickly realized that there was very limited seating available.  I sat with our bags and Joe went off to explore the area and try to find a place were we could rest.  Thankfully, he found some seats with no arm rests that would do.  Unfortunately, it was in the waiting area for the arrival flights.  That night the last flight was coming in from El Salvador.  What that meant was that there were hundreds of of El Salvadorians waiting to pick up their loved ones.  It seemed that it was a family event… At 11pm there were entire families waiting at the airport; children from the age of 1 to elderly in their 80’s.  The flight was on time at about 12:30am and after that the area was quiet. 

I slept like a baby until 5am.  Joe on the other hand, was not as lucky.  He stayed up most of the night and was not a happy camper in the morning.

We started getting cleaned up and got changed into a fresh set of clothes.  We went up to the departure level and checked into the flight.  We then headed directly for the Air Canada lounge… I think that we were the only 2 backpackers there but that was fine by us.  We had some breakfast and picked up some magazines and then got onto our flight to Beijing via Vancouver…

After 3 hours from LA to Vancouver and another 11 hours of flying from Vancouver to Beijing, we had finally arrived!