Los Angeles

Just bailed off a long haul flight from Sydney to Los Angeles on V Australia.

Before I go on let me just say that Singapore Airlines (currently the world's best airline and definitely my favourite)....look out! V Australia was awesome - a beautiful new plane, great service, unreal entertainment, comfy seats. It was definitely one of the more comfortable long haul flights I've had.

Qantas and United are dead in the water by comparison - ladies and gentlemen, it's time to choose comfort over frequent flyer points!

Anyway, enough about that. I really wanted to write about just how bloody amazing Los Angeles is.

I can't say I'm a fan of the city, but flying in is truly a spectacular experience.

Half an hour before you see the coast of the USA you hit LA's smog, wafting out over the ocean because it's got nowhere else to go.You begin to realise you are flying into one of the world's most congested, sprawling metropolises.

On this trip in we had to first fly inland before circling around and coming into land from the east....and for the final 25 minutes of the flight we were coming in over the endless suburbs of the city. It begins to defy the imagination - there doesn't seem to be a patch of green, just block upon square block of houses, buildings, factories, and more roads than you could possibly imagine....

The freeways zig-zag across the landscape, seeming to go everywhere and nowhere, choked with traffic as far as the eye can see. It's all just so....grey.

I've flown into some big cities before. Shanghai, Mexico City, Sao Paulo....amazing places. Coming into Sao Paulo was the most impressive for me - flying in one beautiful evening, a full moon hanging in the sky painted red by the smog and refracted evening light, and highrise buildings climbing across the landscape and up over the distant hills. Don't remember which airport it was, but it was a short runway, so the pilot brought the plane down hard and jammed on the brakes so hard we all felt we were going to go through the seat in front of us....

But back to LA anyway. They've done a good job with the arrivals area at the airport. I've flown in several times over the past few years and their 3 years worth of renovations seem to be finally doing the job and clearing up part of the chaos.

Immigration were....friendly! Impressive!

Just waiting for our connecting flights now - heading to Mexico via San Francisco....let's just hope that everything goes smoothly from here!