LA airport (at least the International terminal) has to be the worst international terminal I have been in since (let me think …) I went through the same terminal last year May. There are absolutely no duty free shops at all (or at least none to speak of). They have one place selling chocolates (See’s Candies) and another general store selling magazines, some sweets, the odd mug, a T-shirt and that was all.

Unfortunately our flight was also delayed but at least we could use the BA lounge. It was quite full though as there were 3 flights leaving simultaneously (or close to each other) that were all using the lounge. And we had a family with 2 small children – one about 2-3 years old and the other a baby. I would take the baby any day over the 2-3 year old.  He was charging up and down yelling, bashing on the keys of the computer etc. Eventually they announced over the PA system that children must be accompanied by their parents at all times and no running was allowed. The mother just laughed and said to the father “That’s YOUR son they are talking about.” They did nothing – he continued. No restraint. And I bet they think they are doing a good job of parenting. I was tempted to give them an instruction in parenting by pointing to Stephen and saying “Do you want your son to end up like him? If so, then some discipline is required because your son will have none when he is older otherwise.”  I bit my tongue.

The flight was pretty uneventful. Thanks again to my PA, Stephen was upgraded and so we were able to sit next to each other at least on that flight. We had dinner, each watched a movie (both of us watched action movies – we have great taste in movies) and then went to sleep. I woke up at (yes you should be able to guess) 6:15am LA time. Stephen woke up about 30 minutes later.  It meant we got about 6 hours sleep. We landed one hour 30 minutes later at 4:15pm. Bizarre to just have breakfast then get off the plane and it is actually late afternoon.

It is now 6pm and we are sitting in the BA lounge again at Heathrow. Stephen forgot to take his tablet out of his bag going through security so that resulted in a through search because he clearly must be hiding something. Hopefully the 10 minute wait while they checked for explosives, strip searched his bag, patted down the empty bag, re-Xrayed everything will remind him next time to take his tablet out.

We are leaving at 7:30pm for CT and hopefully all on time.  Will leave the lounge shortly to do some shopping for Helen.