The big clock in the LAX terminal showed 6:40 am in Los Angeles. The plane had just landed and, despite our tiredness, excitement was winning. We were in the United States when it hadn't even been in our plans barely a week earlier. Surprisingly, we got through customs fairly quickly and found ourselves on the shuttle to the car rental agency. Once again, the formalities there were dealt with in no time. A young man led us to the cars and invited us to choose whichever we wanted among the "mid-size" ones. That surprised us enormously and we looked at each other laughing. We didn't have an assigned car as with European companies; we could pick from gigantic rows of vehicles. Far from being medium-sized, every car in the row was rather imposing by French standards. We chose a Hyundai Elantra with a boot so big that all our luggage fitted without any problem, whereas in New Zealand we'd had to squeeze it onto the back seat. We settled into the front seats and officially launched our road trip across the United States of America.
With no internet and only a semblance of a map, our first experience of the Californian roads was rather chaotic. We'd naively thought signs would point the way to the main destinations — Santa Monica, in our case. Not only was everything very poorly signposted, but traffic was jammed in every direction. We tried to find our way with the semblance of a map on our phones, cursing ourselves for not having thought ahead and downloaded the maps beforehand. We were instantly confronted with the American way of life. Everyone had their own car and public transport was non-existent. On the highway there was even a priority lane reserved for vehicles with more than one person, and hardly anyone was using it. Looking out of the windows, we saw that most cars had only the driver in them.
After an hour's drive to cover a measly 15 kilometres and many moments of confusion on the road, we finally arrived in Santa Monica. An iconic part of Los Angeles, it's where most Hollywood celebrities live, and you could tell from the look of the houses and cars. We walked along the sea, enjoying the early sun and the free Wi-Fi so we could complete our next two essential steps: withdrawing money and getting a SIM card. We went to Bank of America and withdrew US dollars. The notes were so dull and flavourless compared with Australian and New Zealand ones. Impossible to tell them apart with the naked eye. We then went into a T-Mobile store, where a very kind salesman set up a temporary plan on my phone. Walking back to the car, we couldn't help noticing that a huge number of homeless people roamed the streets in truly precarious conditions. They often pushed a dying shopping trolley, in dirty, tattered clothes. The American dream clearly didn't apply to everyone.
It had just struck 11 and we were starting to get hungry. We'd got off the plane at 6:15 and tiredness was starting to catch up with us too. The Original Farmers Market seemed a good place to eat and have a coffee; it's the top market in LA. We wandered through the aisles looking for something that might interest us. The choice was extremely wide and confirmed the cosmopolitan character of this megacity. The "French crêpes" stand was run by Asians who were clearly not French at all, which made us smile. We had a slice of pizza at an Italian stall before getting a coffee at a little stand. We made the mistake of ordering a medium and ended up with an enormous cup. Luckily the brew was excellent! There was an anthill atmosphere peculiar to big cities that we'd completely forgotten between Australia and New Zealand. We could feel lives going at a hundred miles an hour around us, thousands of projects, constant activity, and it did us good.
Like good tourists, we of course went straight to Hollywood Boulevard. We parked a little way off and walked to the Walk of Fame. Oddly, because of television and magazines, we'd expected a superb, spacious, modern avenue. We were a little disappointed to find it was a completely ordinary pavement with stars bearing names set into it. The experience was fun all the same and we read the names attentively. In places it felt like walking down a cardboard street, like entering Disneyland but much less clean. Every thirty metres we were accosted by drivers offering us guided tours of iconic places. We quickly found a way out by saying we'd already done it, and that worked very well. We realised the power of American soft power. Through the media we had a glamorous image of everything American, but reality was inevitably all too real. This boulevard was just a boulevard, and if it had ever been seductive, that was probably decades ago.
It was full of shops and we couldn't help doing a bit of shopping. It was also a chance to come up against the American system. All prices were shown before tax, and you only found out the total at the till. Hard for Europeans to understand, but you had to get used to it, and we certainly didn't want to lecture anyone. We were in a different country and adapted to the way of life without complaint. Our perfect-tourist tour then took us, of course, to the Hollywood sign. We were surprised to find it wasn't all that touristy. There was no real parking area and the pavement probably wasn't designed for the masses of tourists who come here every year. We took the obligatory photos and then wandered in the park below.
We then went to our Airbnb for the night, and it matched our image of American apartments exactly: poorly insulated, a bit old-fashioned and run-down. The shower worked strangely and leaked everywhere. A sign on the door explained that the lack of insulation was normal in the USA: because Los Angeles is in an earthquake zone, they build their houses with wood and plasterboard, which according to them explained the lack of thermal and sound insulation. The owners had probably had several complaints from foreign guests and felt obliged to post this shaky explanation. We had a two-hour nap before going to get food from a fast-food joint, of course. The In-N-Out in West Hollywood was known for appearing in The Big Lebowski, and since we were five minutes' drive away, we went there for burgers. We thought we could sit down and eat at leisure, but the name should have tipped us off: In-N-Out, as in in and out in no time. So it was takeaway, and we ordered our meals before going home to eat. The meal was excellent, and despite its poor nutritional value, we couldn't help falling asleep happy.