Well, we finally landed at around 3:30pm local time. Passed through immigration no problem - then had to join another queue of people from our flight being grilled about "Hoof and Mouth Disease" at customs - where the US Dairy Association (USDA) officials were out in force trying to keep this deadly disease out of the United States. Luckily they didn't make us step our nicy shiny shoes through a bath of disinfectant. Seriously though, foot and mouth disease would be rather desparate for the folks over here - it's hard to imagine Americans surviving life without medium-well beef steaks and Slim Jims.

Picked up the car from Dollar - a brand new Dodge Intrepid. Even though I had pre-paid for the car months ago in the UK - the counter representative still tried to upsell me to an MPV - but gave up sharpish when I politely declined and then I said I was in the mobile phone business and asked him if he would be interested in a new mobile phone. The poor British tourists on the counter adjacent to me were, unfortunately, not aware of the infamous hard-sell tactics of American car rental counter reps - and given the vulnerability of such folks who are extremely tired after having endured a long tough flight in economy class - probably left with an oversized, expensive MPV.

Dodge Intrepid - like all American cars - it just bounces (in a slow dampened vertical oscillation sort of way) over the bumps in the road - especially at intersections.

After checking out the car, we hit the road - only to find out that it was weekday evening rush hour on the freeways of Los Angeles. It took us nearly an hour and a half of congested freeways and numerous U-turns to get to our hotel in Anaheim!

We hit the rush our traffic in LA as we made our way from airport to hotel.

Whilst on Interstate 10 we spotted the famous Hollywood sign in the distance!

As soon as we checked in to our hotel (actually a block of long-stay serviced apartments) I had to go find the nearest supermarket to stock up on basic supplies. When you have kids you have to know where you can get fundamental provisions like milk, bread, bottled water etc. After driving around for a while and stopping off at a 7-11 to ask for directions I finally found an "Albertsons" - which I can only guess is a well-known chain of supermarkets in the Southern California area.

We finally arrived at our hotel.

Well - I'm a couple of days behind in keeping these pages up-to-date. Having fun! Keep watching. Should have some more stuff uploaded on Friday.

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