The time spent on the plane had seemed to go by in a sort of time warp, but now we had landed, everything was exciting and we were running on adrenaline, and our eyes just stared out of the shuttle window at all the new things we could see. The journey to Burbank took about 40 minutes, and the Spanish guy got out at Glendale - the district adjacent to Burbank, and the place we were looking forward to visiting - Tony had told us of this huge shopping mall, the Glendale Galleria and had promised to take us there. The driver checked with us where we were going, and for some reason the Airline pilot decided it would be easier for him to be dropped off at a hotel near to where we were going, rather than Burbank Airport, and so he got out next, and collected his luggage, and while he paid the driver there seemed to be a bit of an altercation going on - and when he got back in, the driver muttered something to himself in Spanish, so we gather the pilot probably didn’t give him much of a tip. He had also been told off on his C.B. radio, by his head office, for not picking up more people before he left the airport, (these minibuses could have probably held another three or four people), so I think he was having a bit of a bad day. He dropped us at Tony’s apartment a few minutes later, and we got out and he said the price was $43.00 (less than £30.00) which was exactly what Tony had said it would be, and he said we could give him "five bucks" tip (about 10%) if we liked, but I wasn’t going to ask the poor guy for $2 back out of a $50.00 note, so I just said "keep the change!" I have always wanted to say that! And it probably made his day seem not so bad after all!
And so we picked up all our stuff - (we had tried to travel light, intending to be able to bring more stuff back if we wanted - Ian and I had a large suitcase between us, but I had managed to pack a smaller case inside, and then we each had a piece of hand luggage, and I had my vanity case, and Vince had again a suitcase with a smaller holdall packed inside (I pinched his idea) and his hand luggage), and we walked up the steps to Tony’s apartment building, and his apartment was at the back, up a few more steps, across a forecourt of palm trees and exotic plants. We knocked on the door and Tony’s twin brother, Nick came to the door, and Lulu, Nick’s wife. Lulu is from Mexico, and they have only recently married. And it was big smiles and hugs all round and Nick said he had kept looking out of the window to see where we were, and as soon as he had stopped looking out for us, we had arrived! So after all the introductions and Hello’s we went inside with all our stuff, and Nick said, "That’s it? Oh, when we go anywhere we would take loads more stuff than that!" We sat down and had a drink of water, and in their apartment they had one of those chilled water dispenser things, that here I have occasionally seen in business premises, but I expressed surprise that I had never seen one of those things in anyone’s house before, and Nick said "What this? We rent this for $8.00 a month!" And so we all chatted for a while and then Lulu got up to make some food, and she made these little Indonesian things, with spiced meat and veg in the middle surrounded by a crisp battery coating and fried, with a dip, and they were delicious! We also had some red Californian Grape juice to drink. After a couple of hours, Tony arrived home from work, and he and Ian met each other for the first time "in the flesh!"
And so Tony and Ian were chatting for a while, and then Ian asked how
far it was to the nearest "Toys R Us". Tony said, "not far, why, do you
want to go there?" By this time we had already been awake for hours longer
than we should have been and my eyelids were starting to droop, but Ian
seemed as fresh as a daisy and said "oh yeah - lets go to Toys R Us"! So
off went Ian, Tony and Vince, and I stayed at the apartment, chatting with
Nick and Lulu about all the places we would visit during our stay. About
an hour later, they returned from Toys R Us with two huge carrier bags
full of stuff! Ian had bought some stuff for himself and some for our friend
Tim, and Vince had bought toys as well! And Ian had bought me an M&M’s
cuddly toy with a pack of miniature M&M’s. Anyway, we were trying to
go to bed at local time to avoid jet-lag, but by about 9.30 or 10.00 p.m.
local time, we couldn’t stay up any longer and, as Nick was also starting
work at 5.30 a.m., we all went to bed.
After Tony went to work, Lulu got up and cooked Nick some breakfast, although for him it was probably more like lunch, and he came home on a break at 9.30 on the dot every morning, and Lulu had his breakfast ready and waiting for him on the table as he only stayed about ten minutes and then went back to work! As we weren’t collecting the car until later, Lulu said she would take us to the Burbank mall that morning on foot. And so we set off in the warm California sunshine, about 85 C I would guess, just comfortable, and we walked along past coffee shops and restaurants and a couple of movie memorabilia and photo shops that Ian and Vince were most interested in and decided they would return another day to have a better look, and then we arrived at a large, sandy coloured building with glass doors that was the entrance to the Burbank Media City Centre or "the mall". This was on Magnolia Boulevard. In we went and inside was air-conditioned and so much cooler. We looked around at the shops. The mall was on three levels, with a huge, old-fashioned carousel or merry-go-round on the lowest floor, with beautiful white horses on it, going around. But there were hardly any people in here - the mall was practically empty! I bought some multi-coloured candles from one shop and was reminded of what I had read in the travel guide - an 8% sales tax is added onto everything. Still, the guy in the shop was really pleasant, friendly and chatty - he was Spanish, but had only been in the U.S.A. for six years!
We passed some cookie and pretzel shops (never did come back and try these) and Ian and Vince headed straight for KB Toys. So they were in there a good half an hour, and came out with toys! We also went in a CD shop, where we bought some CD’s, I bought some postcards and Vince bought some T-shirts. We stopped at a coffee and fudge bar for some iced/frothy coffees/chococcino and I discovered that American’s drink their coffee through this tiny hole in the lid of the cup - this is so they don’t spill it in their cars, many of which have drinks holders - whereas I just took the lid off and drunk it hot - Ian told me I was drinking it wrong, but I didn’t believe him at first!
Afterwards, Lulu went to phone Nick, who would have finished work by now, and asked him to come and pick us up so we didn’t have to walk back. We waited on the steps of the Media City Centre, soaking up the Californian September sunshine. Ian became most fascinated by the polished, shiny brass fire hydrants on the outside of the building, and took photographs. Later that afternoon we went to Budget to pick up the hire car. They offered me a "Metro" (which I think was a Ford), or a Nissan Sentra, both what the Americans call "compact" cars. But I was worried about the indicators and wipers being on opposite sides, as they are on all Japanese cars in the UK, but the guy just looked at me puzzled and slightly amused. He shook his head and said they are all on the same side - indicators on the left and wipers on the right! And so I felt a bit silly, but said, upon Nick’s advice, that the Nissan would be fine. I guess America is such a big market that they make them especially with all the things the same way round. The car was in fact made by Nissan in Mexico. It was a greyish-blue colour, and a similar size to my Citroen Xsara. Oh, and they said if we paid up front for a full tank of petrol, or "gas", then we could return it empty or nearly empty. And the price of a full tank of gas? Sixteen dollars! That’s about a tenner! We had noticed petrol at the garages was about $1.35 a gallon. That’s about equivalent to 80 pence for five litres, so we are paying about five times as much for petrol in the UK! It was sickening!
And so Vince went and got back in Nick’s car to give me a chance to get used to the car and Ian and I got in the Sentra. After a couple of minutes checking the seat, mirrors, etc, and feeling quite disoriented at being on the left-hand side of the car, I started it up and slowly pulled away. At least it was an automatic, so I didn’t have to contend with gears. I was following Nick, but for this first trip, we were only going about 100 yards up the road, and then making a left turn, as we had already decided we were going to take a look at "Fry’s", an absolutely huge electrical warehouse store. When driving on the right, left turns are the opposite of our right turns, where you have to cross the oncoming traffic, but the thing about America, or California at least, is the roads are all very straight, with traffic lights at most intersections and the roads all criss-cross each other in a square grid pattern. There are usually two lanes on each side on main roads, and then for left turns there is a separate lane in the middle, so if you get a green arrow to turn left it is really easy. Otherwise you have to wait for the oncoming traffic. Right turns are of course, the easiest, as they are the opposite of our left turns. And, as I found out later, you are allowed to turn right on a red traffic light if nothing is coming! And the other thing we noticed is, pedestrians have a lot more priority than they do here - if pedestrians are crossing, regardless of whether they have a green man (I only ever saw one "DON’T WALK" sign, in San Francisco, I think), or not, you must wait for them to cross, and because they know this, they really make a point of taking their time and moseying across at a leisurely pace!
Anyway, we turned into Fry’s car park, and went inside. This place was amazing! All over the store were massive life-size reproductions of spaceships, aliens, etc! As you walked in, above the entrance was constructed as if a spaceship had crashed into the side of the building, complete with rubble, and some "Mars Attacks" aliens on a ledge! Then, towards the back of the store was another massive spaceship, with the body of the ship above our heads and the legs protruding down to the floor. We were looking around and then I noticed this giant realistic-looking ant - it must have been about fifteen feet high and about thirty feet long! And it had really hairy legs sticking out everywhere! Ugh! We looked briefly at the digital cameras, as we had bought one ourselves earlier this year, and then we discovered that not only did they sell electrical goods in here, but CD’s, books, computer games, stationery, etc. And so I headed straight for the book section, and after only a few seconds looking, I spotted one of the most wanted things on my hit list! A book called "Electric Bread" that I had seen in a catalogue at home for £29.95, but it said it was an American book so I thought I’d wait and see if it was cheaper over here. And sure enough, the published price was $29.95, which would be about £20.00, but the price Fry’s were selling it at was $9.95!!! So a book which would have cost me £30 in the UK cost me about £6!! I was well chuffed! Ian found a Titanic computer game, which was the same as one he had borrowed from the library a few months ago, so he got that. We looked at all the computer stationery and stuff. Then we suddenly thought about the cards for the digital camera which store the pictures, and so we went back to that section to see if they were cheaper there than at home, and after much deliberation we bought a 48Meg card which can hold 169 high quality photographs. The card which came with the camera only holds 13! So we were pleased with that and considered it a good investment, since, after this holiday, we can download the photos and use it again. Eventually we left Fry’s with all our bargains, and I prepared to drive back to the apartment. After a slight technical hitch with the automatic gears, where we found out that the brake pedal needs to be depressed to release the gear stick from PARK, off we went. I followed Nick all the way back to the apartment, but at one crossroads, there were no traffic lights, only 4 STOP signs, one on each road. This is where, I suppose, in England, we would put a roundabout, but I got to this junction, Nick seemed to just go, and I didn’t have a clue who had right of way, so after a few seconds, I just followed him! I was going, like "Hey, who’s got right of way here?" And then, on a particularly steep hill, we stopped at traffic lights and I was thinking - how do you do a hill start in an automatic? I just thought well, maybe you can’t roll back, and then the lights changed and sure enough, the car didn’t roll back at all after all that. So we arrived back at the apartment and I made the fatal mistake of parking in the only available spot, which happened to be next to a red kerb, and Nick told me I couldn’t park there as it is for fire engine access and so I moved the car up the road. He also told me to turn the wheels in towards the kerb and when I asked why, he said if you didn’t the police would give you a ticket, because if the handbrake fails, the car cannot be allowed to roll off down the road! Hmmm, there was a lot to remember! I also asked Nick when we got back, exactly who has priority at those junctions, and he said "the 4-way STOP signs? Well, you are supposed to look as you approach the junction to see who got there first and you go in order of those who arrived at the STOP sign first! But occasionally you get some jackass who just goes!"
Later that evening when Tony got home from work he took us to Lucky’s, the supermarket, and there I was in my element! There was so much I could have bought! Lots of interesting salads, cookies, yogurts, juices, but in the end we bought mostly fruit, bagels, cookies, breakfast cereals, yogurts, and we had to try all the sweets (candies) that we had never tried before. Peanut butter M&M’s (yum), Twinkies, Hershey Bars, Crispy M&M’s, cinnamon bagels (yum), cinnamon breakfast cereals (yum), flavoured coffees (OK but a bit sweet), fruit juices (yum). Some things we bought with Tony’s Lucky’s card - so he got reward points, and the cashier said "you don’t have Lucky’s in England?" and Ian was quick to reply "no, only Unlucky’s!"
Tony couldn’t believe all the "candy" we bought and we tried to convince him that we didn’t normally eat this much chocolate, it was only because we wanted to try things. He said people must have thought we had a lot of kids! On the way back, Tony said "I can’t wait to take you guys to the Galleria, don’t let Nick take you, will you?" When we got back we went mad, opening all the packets and trying everything! Only to find that on the whole, everything was too sweet (Twinkies, coffee), or just not to English tastes (Hershey Bars). The M&M’s with peanut butter were nice though, and we ate the cereals for our breakfasts. The coffee we brought home and have been mixing it half and half with unsweetened cappuccino to make it less sweet. Even the one marked "sugar-free" was sweetened with aspartame, so still far too sweet for our tastes!