The City of Angles.

Beth and I had good 3 hour flight to LA with United. Service was good with lots of offers of soft drinks and juices. No in flight entertainment.

No problems arriving and getting the shuttle to the Sheraton Gateway Hotel. This is one of the closest hotels to the airport with not much around it but other hotels and office buildings. We had a very nice room and then went for a little walk so we could w

ork up an appetite for dinner. Got back in time for happy hour

 and a great pasta meal. 

The next day we were up bright and early for our morning tour of LA. We were picked up at the hotel at 0815 and taken to Santa Monica where we joined a small group of tourists for the

 city tour. The tour took us to Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Hollywood and the walk of stars, Sunset strip and Mulholland Drive.

We saw some very fancy shops on Rodeo Drive. One was a men's clothing store. You shop by appointment and then they close the blinds so tourists can not look in to see who is shopping. You must pay $1500 for the privilege to shop there. You do get it back

 if you purchase more then $1500 worth of clothes. If you decide you do not like anything - too bad you loose the $1500.

After the tour we spend 4 hours in Santa Monica on the pi

er and shopping (window only) The day was warm, the sky was clear but it cooled right off as soon as the sun was starting to set. Santa Monica is a very nice district with good shops, large beach and a very interesting pier.

Some organization had set up a memorial to the USA soldiers that had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. As you can see in the picture there have been a lot of them. One item that hit home was their death rate in Afghanistan was 6 times that of our Cana

dian death rate.

 By population they should have been 10 times more deaths then ours. It showed me what a dangerous place our troops are working in.

We were then taken back to the hotel where we picked up our luggage and caught the van to the airport. We were 4 hrs early and when we arrived we found out our flight was delayed 2 hrs for repairs. That was a long 6 hrs but we found a nice little bar and meet an interesting Australian who works in Montana on a ranch that takes the wealthy elk, deer, and moose hunting. He spends about 4 months a year working there then goes home and works on his farm in New South Wales.