Leaving Las Vegas

Next morning, we had time for breakfast - Starbucks again! Back to the room to get bags and then down to check out. So far, so good!

We walked to Bally's hotel and through to the other end to get the bus back to LA, and we were really looking forward to that, not! Quick look at the Parisian as we'd missed it so far and then through to wait for the bus, due at 11 o'clock. I just wasn't confident that it would turn up after the journey up and when it didn't arrive at 11 I started to panic! (It doesn't take much!) I braved using the phone and called the office and was told to ring another number - o-oh! I rang the other number and asked if they knew if the bus was running on time. "Yeah, it's just turning into the Bally hotel so it should be with you". it was a good job she told me that as the bus that then pulled in was totally different to the bus we'd come up on and had no name on the side. We would never have known it was our bus, but as it stopped, suddenly a large group of people appeared from nowhere and tried to get on the bus! Help!

We joined the group and fortunately there was someone checking tickets and giving out seat numbers and we were ticked off the list and got the luggage into the store and got our seats. Ohh, wifi and password available, that might make the journey better. Oh no it won't, it doesn't work! So at least we were on the bus and the driver seemed capable, all things being equal, we might actually get to LA this afternoon!

After about four hours of the same view of desert, the city started to appear and greenery and houses took over from the bleak surroundings. We should've known it was too good to be true, after the first LA stop and back onto the freeway there was rustling and a woman came down the bus to tell the driver he'd missed her stop! Great, someone else was supposed to be getting off at the Monterey 4.30 p.m. stop and wanted to know when we'd be there. Some broken English and rough translations led me to think "here we go again". So we get off the freeway, go around and back onto the same highway going the way we'd just come to get back to the stop he'd missed and drop off that one person! All stops were running late so we knew we would be later getting to our hotel than we hoped but at least we didn't have to get from the office to the hotel to pick up luggage and then get to the airport to get a flight home to Australia by 9p.m. like the family in the opposite seats who were really starting to worry!

The LA traffic is ridiculously busy, 5 to 7 lanes of traffic crawling along and now we're running a bit late we get caught up in more traffic as everyone starts to head home. It could've been worse, the trip up to Vegas had shown us that, so when we got back to Downtown LA and the hole of an office, we were just glad we'd made in.  We had thought about trying to get a bus to Santa Monica - how difficult could that be? However, as it was very dark and getting late, we asked the office to call a taxi for us and when it turned up 10 minutes later asking for Kim, we tried to claim him and he walked off! HELP!  Don't panic yet, he hasn't driven off ... yet! The party of three Hispanics tried to claim him when he got back out of his car and he asked how many we were and where we wanted to go and ... we won - yay, see you you skanky Americans, ha ha! Two to Santa Monica, thanks very much - at this stage we would probably have paid anything to get to our hotel but how lucky were we when it was only $50! Probably best not to answer that! Still the taxi driver turned out to be not so scary as we first thought so another bonus - maybe things were improving for us!

So eventually, we made it through the traffic to what, in the dark, seemed like a nice area and the hotel was right next to an IHOP - we love IHOP - ideal! Checked in and left our bags in the more than adequate room and almost ran next door for some dinner! It was good and we had some wine too, at least she called it red wine but it tasted slightly more like petrol would taste if I ever got that desperate, anyway, needs must!