We have found that we struggle with sleep the night before we leave, every time we travel internationally, partly because we’re excited for the trip, and partly because we can’t turn our minds off. We spend the entire night trying to think of something we might have forgotten. Then you are awake for an extended number of hours as you travel. Upon arriving you are exhausted and trying to make decisions and navigate in your new surroundings. Not a good way to start your trip.....we know from past experiences!
So we’ve decided that we are going to do it a little different this time. We are traveling into Los Angeles the day before our flight leaves for Thailand, in hopes that it will help us turn our brains off so we can sleep.
In general the basic flights offered by Gate-1 to Thailand leave from Los Angeles, and Gate-1 will either book your flights from Los Angeles, or they will book your flights from your place of origin. For us, the flights that Gate-1 was going to put us on from Denver to Los Angeles were very expensive, so we decided to find our own flights from Denver to Los Angeles. By flying into Los Angeles a day early and staying at the Holiday Inn Express overnight, we were able to travel much cheaper than if we had needed to fly into Los Angeles on Sunday. Again, these are the perks of being retired. Flexibility in travel will save you a lot of money and may even add a fun extra day of vacation to your trip.
 |
| A picture out the airplane window as we flew over. Winter is definitely making an appearance in the Colorado mountains |
 |
| The top of the picture is the Flagstaff, AZ Mountain bottom is the start of the Grand Canyon |
 |
Bad picture, but we flew over Lake Havasu City. You can see the river, lake and island.
|
We left Denver at 2:25 p.m. and landed in Los Angeles at about 3:30 (one-hour time change), in time for a nice evening. We caught the hotel shuttle at LAX, and were at the hotel in no time. Since we have been part of the hotel perks program for some time, we are always offered the best available room at our time of check-in. This time we were give a top floor suit. It definitely met our expectations and will make our stay very comfortable.
 |
| Add caption |
We were also offered a late checkout, which we really appreciated since our flight doesn't leave until 10:30 tomorrow night.
After getting settled into our room, we decided to take a walk and check out the sights around our hotel. The weather was beautiful, so we really enjoyed our stroll and were able to find a few places that looked good to eat.
We came back to the room and got cleaned up a bit and then went back out to a Persian restaurant we found during our stroll. It was interesting in that it was two restaurants in one. The first was called Jino's and served Italian, the second was Pars and served Persian food. They handed us both menus as we walked in, so we could choose which type of food we wanted. We both chose Persian Kabobs. They brought them family style, which was nice. We really enjoyed it, but would have preferred a few more vegetables.
 |
| Soup and Salad for starters |
 |
| Beef and Lamb kabobs with grilled vegetables and rice |
And the view from our room was beautiful, making for a great end to a great day!
 |
| Beautiful view from our room, back toward the airport |
No comments:
Post a Comment