The first day in LA

We're at the Luxe on Rodeo Drive. About to hit the sack after a long day.

We sat for 2 hours on the tarmac at Kingsford Smith (Sydney) and were therefore 2 hours late into LAX. These airlines are amazing. Somehow they miscalced weight and had to offload fuel.

The flight itself was fine and uneventful as you want it to be (not quite Singapore Airline service, but okay). Immigration looked like being a breeze till they looked at Gabby's passport and found it had a different digit to what the computer was showing. Normally they would just override however they had installed a new system the day before. We had to wait for half an hour while 3 different officers tried to fix the problem. Finally got there.

The weather was cold and wet in LA however the limo Lisa Hackner arranged to meet us cheered us up although the traffic was horrendous. Another small hiccup when the dumb limo driver forgot to unpack a huge bag he had in the seat to next to him (we also had 3 big bags next to us in the limo). He drove, we didn't have his number and were panicking but fortunately he noticed it next to him and came back a little later.

The Luxe is in a great spot on Rodeo however we found the single room we'd booked was way too cramped and fortunately were able to upgrade to interconnecting rooms.

After freshening up we picked up our rental car (trying to remember to stay on the right; thank goodness for the GPS) and had lunch at the Hackners and then headed to the Beverly Centre for a bit of shopping. I haven't yet been able to get US sims for our mobile phones but hope to do so by tomorrow.

This evening the girls went to watch Lisa's daughter's school concert while Benj and I retired to the room. He was out like a light soon after leaving me to chill. The Hackner's have been wonderful to us.

Tomorrow promises to be a big day with Helene and Gab off to the Ellen show which will be a real treat.The rest of us are taking a backlot tour at the same studios.

Good night...zzzzzzzzzzzz