A night flight, yet another change of timezone and an hour walk from LA airport at 5am…we were surprisingly awake. Well, until we fell asleep at the Santa Monica library at three in the afternoon. It was a relief to have our feet planted on the mainland and no more flights for a long time. We watched Santa Monica wake up and had our first proper meal out at Le Pain Quotidian. It was comfortingly hipster, just like home. And then later tacos, just like on Gertrude Street. No I promise I’m not homesick already, but I am a creature governed by her stomach and Melbourne food is hard to beat!

Whilst walking along the cliffs I looked out onto clear water and a quiet carnival. Suddenly a bright emerald green blur hovered into my cone of vision. A hummingbird visiting the bright orange flowers, I fumbled with the camera, balancing on a rail, only capturing a bright tail as a homeless man yelled at me “get the shot, get the shot!”. Both ridiculous and magical, that’s the way I’ll remember this time. Then a bus ride through Los Angeles for the night train. The station was stunning, all coloured tiles and soaring ceiling. Dylan and I were offered special privileges as we had a “roomette” on the train. When people looked at our tickets their attitude changed, all sir and ma’am, we even got ushered into the first class lounge. Here we had our choice free snacks and drinks! It was quite hilarious as some people were travelling two days and nights to Chicago and would of spent hundreds of dollars, we were only heading to Flagstaff so had shelled out no more than a cheap hotel. Once aboard we were notified our engine was busted and needed to be replaced. It took two hours to fix, annoying to everyone except Dylan and I, now we would be arriving at 7am instead of 5! The pillow called.