As it is the gateway for tourists from the Northern Americas.
The flight to Los Angeles on a Sunday resulted in the terminal buildings being overfull with Bermuda shorts, ironic sombrero’s, beer cans in hands and freshly tanned holidaymakers.
Not returning home from a holiday, but being on a business trip, the overfull terminal with thousands of holiday goers looked like bad luck or a light nightmare.
Fortunately Margarita, the sweet friend who had spent the last days with the dynamic photographer, knew what to do.
In the past she has been working at the airport and managed thanks to her experience and contacts to circumvent the endless long lines of weary travellers to check in as a VIP.
Frontier Airlines flies with European build Airbus airplanes and they are good.
Leave more or less on time.
Good and friendly service on board.
For a very reasonable price.
The trouble is not flying.
As has been experienced over and over again, the trouble is Immigration entering the USA.
It might become repetitive, and the details will not be repeated, but getting through Immigration takes as long as half of the flying time from Los Angeles to Los Cabos, Mexico.
Reasons are that each person takes at least 10 minutes to process.
Often longer.
And very few Immigration Officers are available for the foreign visitors.
Besides, nothing has been done to make the waiting more comfortable.
Everybody has to wait in line.
Good luck in case you are physically challenged.
Good luck in case you travel with children.
Nobody can rest and sit down.
For approximately one hour it is a dreadful shuffle.
It is also not allowed to make phone calls from mobiles.
Why don’t they put big screens showing the beautiful sides of the USA the foreign visitors can watch while waiting for one hour before to be fingerprinted and photographed and before to explain who they are, what they are coming to do in the USA and how long they plan to stay to a heavily armed man or woman?
The only thing to do while waiting in line is to observe the other people.
One remarkable family was waiting.
They had a very young child in the arms of the mother and a son of about 6.
The boy had plastic gloves on.
Obviously for medical reasons.
Sometimes he was touching his ears, cheeks, head and arms as if he was suffering of itching.
He had darkness around his eyes and looked lost and tragic.
It was observed that this boy was not getting any attention of the parents.
The father and the mother were chatting and laughing, nice to the baby and completely ignoring the son with the plastic gloves.
He followed his parents like a shadow as if he knew that if he didn’t he would end up in the lost and found.
Itching and allergy can have psychological reasons.
Maybe the boy doesn’t need to wear plastic gloves.
If the father and the mother were just able to love the son properly.
The two nights in Los Angeles are in the LAX Holiday Inn hotel.
A rather decayed hotel.
It should have been refurbished and modernised long time ago.
The paintings in the room are screwed to the wall.
In anticipation of guests who might get the idea to take the painting home.
And this morning commotion in the breakfast hall because an Oriental young man had no money to pay for his 14 USD breakfast.
Strange messages when a room is officially 259 USD per night while it can be bought on the Internet for 120 USD.
As the Dollar is pleasantly low in value, today is shopping for friends in Europe.
One Euro pays 1,52 USD and this is like getting a 52 % discount in case one has Euros in the pocket.
Most exciting is the following of an important advice received from loyal and fervent blog reader Eric Johnson.
To get a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet.
This is a device that connects to a computer and with a pen on the tablet one moves the cursor.
And the new OS X Leopard software program needs to be purchased.
Worth all the waiting to go through Immigration.
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