California Dreamin' part 2 - Flea-bag Motel

Welcome to the Hotel California

Such a lovely place -

                        (such a lovey place)

Such a lovely face.

Plenty of room at the Hotel California

Any time of year -

                        (any time of year)

You can find it here.

When Jens and I travel, we are always bombed out from crossing 9 time zones.  We can never stay awake past 7pm/19:00 when we arrive in California.   And then in the middle of the night we are wide awake and can't fall back to sleep.  It's horrible.

So I planned this visit with that fact in mind.  I decided to stay in a hotel room at LAX.  This way I could sleep and in the morning I would get an early start and go visit my old workmate and long time friend, Gail.  She lives just 5 minutes away from LAX.

I looked on google maps to see where a bus stop/taxi stop and hotel are so that it would be a real easy morning when I wake up.  I could either take a $2 bus and walk 5 minutes or take a $15 taxi ride to her front door.  I would let it depend on what time I woke up and how fresh I was.  

There are plenty of affordable hotels on Century Blvd., but if you don't spend a minimum of 200 bucks, you will for sure end up with bed bugs sucking the blood out of you.  Basically for $50 more, there is a big jump in quality.  What I ended up with was surprisingly pleasant and I was pleasantly surprised.

Here now are a few photos of and from the hotel looking out of the window of my room.

 

H Hotel is where I stayed.

Here is the link to see pix from the hotel website - just in case you are in need. 

The below pix is from the website of the room that I didn't just stay in - but lounged in.  

It was really nice and relaxing and a great way to start to unwind from all those damn time zones.

The below photo is interesting because it shows part of the new sky tram that is being built at the moment.

Watch this Youtube video to see what it will look like after completion.

These LAX signs were just out front of the H hotel.  

I could also see them from the window of my room.

After I checked in, I walked the boulevard to Denny's.  Something quick and easy.  Decent food for the price and to take these photos for Jens as this is his favorite chain restaurant in California.

I did my best to stay up to match California sleeping hours.  I guess I went to bed about 11pm/23:00.  When I woke up, these were the views from my hotel window.

This is the early morning view I woke up to with the moon in the west, over the Pacific Ocean.  You can see the iconic mid-century space-age theme structure on the left.  Construction started in 1957.  The plans were to have this point, finger out to all the terminals.  That never happened and the original design ended up with major changes.  This link will help you see the building if you have problems spotting it on the above photo.  

After a delicious hotel breakfast (not included in the price) and a fantastic cuppa-java, I snapped these photos just as I was getting ready to pack and check out.  The view was amazing as I could see the Santa Monica mountains on the right and the Pacific ocean, from the window of my room.  

I was all set, packed and ready to go visit Gail.  She had called the hotel several times to get in touch with me but I was in the hotel restaurant enjoying my breakfast. Sadly, there was a last minute change of plans.  Gail was soon to be going in for an operation and she was very nervous and didn't want to take any chances with the corona virus.  I can understand that.  Her doctor said it was very important to be corona free and here I was just coming off of a plane with 150 passengers and surely one of them must have been positive - right?  So we agreed to stay in touch and hopefully we can meet on the next visit.

Therefore, I now needed to head back to LAX and get on the flyaway bus to Union Station down town LA.