We survived Terminal Five!

Luckily, it was a bank holiday when we left London, so the traffic was really light. We had some trepidation after all the publicity we’d seen about delays and lost baggage at Terminal 5, but it was a piece of cake really. We had to use the check-in machines like we do at home, and were amazed to find that the default seats we were allocated were the last two together seats on the plane, even though we were early checking in. They were the middle two of the centre four, so we didn’t even have an aisle. We were on a British Airways flight, which was the only one of our trip that we weren’t able to pre-select our seats on.


The terminal is beautiful, and as I said to Allan, “this is what I call duty free shopping!” Miles and miles of shops selling all sorts - didn‘t buy much tho‘.

Security was extreme - we had to remove jackets, shoes (even my open sandals) and belts. Even so, there were only small queues.

The terminal has its own underground train to its other two buildings, so it is pretty vast. The flight was a long 11 hours, leaving at midday local time, and arriving at our hotel at 3 am on our body clocks - we didn’t sleep much either. I prefer to fly at night as we do on our homeward trip - more conducive to sleeping.

Security in LA was extreme as you’d expect, although again we were lucky with queues. We were finger printed and iris scanned, but there is no MAF type checking as we have at home, so the biggest delay was getting our luggage.

Took a shuttle to Santa Monica - our hotel is beautiful and the beach endless, and only a block away.