Los Angeles, California

As predicted, we didn't sleep very well, due to our room being near the restaurant. The breakfast was reasonable although the woman working there seemed bothered! This hotel was one of our most expensive so far but at least the location was ideal.

Getting to the airport was really easy as there was a train station only a few blocks away. We nearly missed the first train though since the ticket machine decided to take forever to spit out the tickets! We had a lot of time to pass in Portland Airport but it wasn't a problem as it was very decent, complete with lots of shops and a violinist. We only bought waters and a coffee before going to the boarding gate.

Even though we were supposed to be on Air Canada, it ended up being a Virgin America flight. When we arrived at LAX, we checked our bag in for our next flight at the United counter. We remembered there was a Denny's near the Hilton so we pretended we were hotel guests and jumped on a transfer bus to take us to the hotel.

Denny's is always a good cheap meal for us, and again we weren't disappointed. We then caught a second shuttle back to the airport and headed to the United gate. Even though there was plenty of seats on the United flight, the agent told us the flight was weight restricted, causing us slight concern!

Ted decided it would be a good idea to walk through the entire LAX airport. I disagreed since I would've preferred to relax. After walking for over half an hour through every terminal I was P.O'd! When Ted pointed out we'd done no cardio all day, I could see his point. We bought a present for Damien whilst in the Qantas terminal too.

Whilst waiting for our tickets, we saw one of the flight attendants we had on the previous flight and she also said we should be fine getting on. The wait seemed to take forever but she was right - we were soon on our way home! It was not as empty as our flight over, but we were still lucky to have three seats between us.

This has certainly been one of our best holidays, as the weather has been near perfect, and the friends we have made have been wonderful. We're looking forward to doing more holidays like this in the future :-)Read more