Friday, February 23, 2007
The Final Day
And so it came to the day when we packed our bags for the final time! How strange was that after 77 days on the trip.
We went for an early morning walk along the beach, took some photos of us on the volleyball court and walked along to Venice Beach. We were passed by individual runners and running clubs all training for the marathon a month later. At Venice Beach we saw the Muscle Beach (open air gym) where Arnie used to work out. There were more cafes etc where we could have had breakfast at Venice Beach and it looked a nice place to spend a day as people started to set up their stalls etc, but we had to catch the bus back to our motel to check out and grab the bags. A quick detour to the 3rd Street Promenade - the pedestrian shopping area to buy stuff at the shop that had shut on us the previous night and we made our way to the bus stop.
Once again thanks to the nice lady at the tourist info, rather than a $14 shuttle each we paid 75c and had an hours bus ride to the airport - another real bargain. We donated to the war veterans association in return for the collector agreeing to post our postcards as there were no post boxes at the airport, and we went through to the smallest departure lounge possible for such a major airport. There were two shops and two restaurant bars and that was pretty much it. We ate to kill time and boarded our last flight home.
The promise of two seats together and no-one next to us, failed to materialise as a guy sat next to us, but Dave told the airhostesses it was our honeymoon and two seats at the back were reserved for us once we'd taken off. Champagne, wine, dinner, Borat and sleep and we were flying over the south coast of England. We were half an hour ahead of schedule but after circling round over Dorking for half and hour we landed at normal time and were kindly met by Jon and Kelly from Volleyball, complete with sign for us.
Now it will probably take us as many weeks to sort the photos!
We went for an early morning walk along the beach, took some photos of us on the volleyball court and walked along to Venice Beach. We were passed by individual runners and running clubs all training for the marathon a month later. At Venice Beach we saw the Muscle Beach (open air gym) where Arnie used to work out. There were more cafes etc where we could have had breakfast at Venice Beach and it looked a nice place to spend a day as people started to set up their stalls etc, but we had to catch the bus back to our motel to check out and grab the bags. A quick detour to the 3rd Street Promenade - the pedestrian shopping area to buy stuff at the shop that had shut on us the previous night and we made our way to the bus stop.
Once again thanks to the nice lady at the tourist info, rather than a $14 shuttle each we paid 75c and had an hours bus ride to the airport - another real bargain. We donated to the war veterans association in return for the collector agreeing to post our postcards as there were no post boxes at the airport, and we went through to the smallest departure lounge possible for such a major airport. There were two shops and two restaurant bars and that was pretty much it. We ate to kill time and boarded our last flight home.
The promise of two seats together and no-one next to us, failed to materialise as a guy sat next to us, but Dave told the airhostesses it was our honeymoon and two seats at the back were reserved for us once we'd taken off. Champagne, wine, dinner, Borat and sleep and we were flying over the south coast of England. We were half an hour ahead of schedule but after circling round over Dorking for half and hour we landed at normal time and were kindly met by Jon and Kelly from Volleyball, complete with sign for us.
Now it will probably take us as many weeks to sort the photos!
# posted by D&M Travels @ 3:22 AM 
