Day 1 - Getting to the US

We arrived in LA a few hours ago after 13 hours and 40 minutes flying time. Our flight was on one of Qantas's new Airbus 380s. This is a huge aircraft, possibly a little more comfortable than a 747 in terms of seat width and pitch. However, in-flight service was not as good as we have experienced on previous flights with Qantas. We were looking forward to the experience of travelling on this newest and biggest passenger jet, but were quite disappointed really. Also when we got to LAX, with 450 passengers on the one flight, we found the immigration desks were swamped, and it took us an hour to clear immigration control, and an hour and a half in total to get out of the airport terminal. Here's a tip for travellers: bigger planes aren't necessarily better for the passengers, even if the airlines may love them.

We picked up our hire car at the airport and drove to the motel in Long Beach that we had booked over the Internet from Australia. It's actually nowhere near as bad as the reviews on the Internet made it out to be - after all, what can you expect for US$38 a night in LA? It's a small room in an old motel, but it has character, it's clean, and has a fridge, microwave, A/C and a huge plasma TV. I think it is dangerously close to deserving a second star in its rating.

After a quick nap we found a nearby 7 Eleven store and bought ourselves dinner and some supplies for the next few days. Our last effort for the day was to find the BMW motorcycle dealer we have been communicating with and check out the bikes in their showroom. Having not got any sleep on the flight, we're ready to crash.