Thursday - fly home tonight

This is going to be a long day! We have woken early (in fact we both woke initially at 3am) ...managed a little dozing after...but our flight doesn’t leave till 11.45pm!!

Yesterday we had a good time, hanging out in Santa Monica, and adjusting to Californian sunshine and warm weather. We can get a bus from just near the hotel here at the airport to Santa Monica, and we can walk from here to the terminals, so extremely handy. Had coffee at our favourite coffee shop, had dinner at Mercado, one of our favourites at SM.

Spent a fruitful time in the Apple store also!! I usually hate all the noise and activity there, but when you need something they are extremely helpful. And I achieved 2 things - firstly they replaced the battery in my iPhone, which had been totally misbehaving, dropping down to 1% very rapidly but amazingly functioning as a camera without actually dying...but when I am back and will be using it as a phone I do need a functioning battery. So they actually did it on the spot, hardly any waiting, and while I waited I bought a new cover for my iPad as the old one was disintegrating. A productive morning.

So today we will again go to Santa Monica, have coffee etc, then hop on another bus to go to the Getty - there is a Manet exhibition that had not yet started when we went though about 6 weeks ago. Then we may also go to the Hamer gallery and eat in Westwood before finally wending our way back to the airport - bags left at the hotel. This should be a better flight - a nighttime flight - but of course we will feel a bit fuzzy as goodness knows what time we think we’re on.

Thank heavens my keyboard seems to be back to normal...don’t know if I had cream on my fingers which meant it wouldn’t register my taps...nothing different from normal I would think, but it was a nightmare! Back to real life tomorrow (i.e. Saturday).Read more