1 July

Lynette slept well but Jim kept waking to London time but did manage to keep up until 10PM. He was flagging a few times during the day though.

Lynnely's condo is in downtown Burbank, a city of 100,000 people, quite near to Beverly Hills. Several of the film studios are located in the city. Many towns make up the Los Angeles county and the county has a population of over 25 million. It's extremely spread out. Most buildings are only one or two stories. There are a few taller ones but they are generally in the centre of the cities, but there weren't many skyscrapers to be seen.

The condo is 1500 square feet, about 150 square metres, on the top (fourth floor). It's two blocks from the centre of Burbank and really handy to shops and restaurants etc. It's very nice and being 10 years old is well insulated from noise and heat. The Police and Fire Stations are only a block away and with the doors closed you struggle to hear the sirens. With a door open, it's another story. (A bail bond shop is opposite the Police Station. Talk about Location, Location, Location.) The main floor has two bedrooms and there's a small mezzanine floor which could be another bedroom. There's three bathrooms in total. Lynnely's room has a large ensuite and a huge walk in wardrobe that she has packed with clothes and shoes. The whole condo is light, bright and airy with a huge microwave/conventional oven that we would like to bring home. In the shared area, there is a large swimming pool, a fitness gym and a spa.

Yesterday the temperature was 30C when we arrived and the humidity probably was around 80%, certainly not as high as in Singapore. Today was a little cooler, probably around 28C and the slight breeze dragged the humidity down.

The first task after breakfast, was to visit Best Buys. Jim brightened the salesman's day by buying a new MacBook Pro from him and a flash drive to haul the data off the old MacBook. Then we went to Walmart where we picked up a few clothes. Unfortunately our bags are fairly full already so we couldn't bring too much more home. We passed by Lynnely's hospital and had lunch at a Japanese restaurant. They make the sushi in front of you, if you sit at the bar. The size was similar to NZ, so we weren't overloaded.

Lynnely is a doctor in a Urgent Care part of the hospital. The nearest we would have to this idea is where doctors operate in a clinic. The Urgent Care facility is for walk-in patients, but not accident or real emergency centre. Most of the patients are from the middle income bracket and they come here because they can't get into a normal GP in a suitable timeframe, or it's Monday and they don't want to go to work. (Lynnely says Mondays are the busiest day of the week and it's quietest when there is a major sports event on in town or the TV.) Lynnely works a 12 hour shift with 12 hours off and work three to five days a week. Sometimes it's more days in a week, if they swap shifts so that they have longer breaks.

After lunch, we drove into central Los Angeles to the Science Museum. On the way you can see all the names that you have heard about and seen on tv - Beverly Hills, Hollywood etc. We even drove down a small portion of Sunset Boulevard.

The museum was interesting. It's set up more for kids with lots of educational displays, and it being the school holidays, there were lots of ankle biters there. The most impressive displays were the space and aeronautical ones. They have a number of planes there including a Blackbird spy plane trainer and a F-111. These are also genuine used space modules. You can even see the scorch marks that they received on reentry. All aspects of life on board a space station were fully explained, including the potty routines.

The really impressive piece is the Endeavour space shuttle. It's got its own display section and was really quite something. It did 25 missions and you can see that it has been well used and that lots of the heat resistant tiles have been replaced. Even the story of how they got it into the museum is quite something.

It had taken us 30 minutes to get into the museum after lunch, but as the museum closed at 5PM, we drove back to Burbank in peak commuter traffic. That took just over an hour. We did get the chance to travel through some of the less wealthy areas, Echo Park, and look at the locals selling on the side of the street. It looks like a long market and we had trouble keeping Lynette in the car.

For dinner, we wandered along Second Street and found a Greek restaurant where Lynnely had never been. It was a good meal, but quite filling.

Lynnely has a great cable/internet service. She gets her TV and internet on it. The internet runs like a dream at 32+ Mbps and it's got unlimited bandwidth.

A replica of the Wright Brothers 1902 glider at the Science Museum

One of the space reentry modules 

A couple of satellites 

Just what we need.  This is a fuel cell generator.  It uses hydrogen and oxygen as fuel and produces 7KW of electricity and water.  Probably costs as much as our house to purchase.  

A mockup of the space program mission control for the Endeavour launches. 

The Endeavour itself 

An engine for the Endeavour 

It's got such a little orifice for the fuel and produces just so much power.

It's easy to see which tiles have been replaced. 

The tiles are so fragile that you can crush them with your bare hands.

Lynnely and Lynette under the Endeavour  

A Roadrunner bird looking for Wyl E Coyote 

The vendors at Echo Park 

Driving through Burbank 

The swimming pool at Lynnely's condo complex is quite large. 

Lynnely's kitchen and lounge