Arriving in Los Angeles

After a short stopover in Houston I flew on to Los Angeles and arrived at 5 in the afternoon. My Hospitality Club host Adam had already sent me some instructions about public transport from the airport to get to his place (more about him and his wife later), cautioning me that I'd be arriving in rush hour and that taking local public busses might be slow and difficult. They live 20 km from the airport between Beverly Hills and Hollywood.

In Amsterdam I asked mighty Google for a route and opened a few pages with tourist info about LA to read on the plane.

I was pleasantly surprised that there is a rather extensive public bus network here, and even though it takes a lot longer than driving, it looked as if it was definitely possible to get around the city by bus. I considered hitchhiking from the airport - probably would have been possible to get a ride somewhere to the North, but in the end decided it would be faster to just hop on the free shuttle bus to the local bus terminal.

There, took the first bus going north - very interesting ride, as is often the case when taking city buses in the U.S.. Besides an interesting mix of people, almost always will there be some harmless crazy person on the bus talking to him/herself without pause. This time it was no different. Had to change buses a couple of times, no problem at all (tip for Android users: mapdroyd is awesome when traveling, especially if you don't know the city - you can download OpenStreetMap based maps for any part of the world, and then coupled with GPS know exactly where you are - no internet connection required). After an hour and a half arrived within a block of my hosts.

Perfectly located there was a big news stand right on the corner, so I could do what I always do when I arrive in the U.S. - have a Dr Pepper (fell in love with this soft drink during my year as AFS exchange student in North Carolina in 94/95, it's hard to impossible to get in Germany). Opening the can, smelling the synthetic aroma and taking the first zip - jup, after 3 years and now 45 hours on the road I had arrived again in my beloved United States of America :-)