LAPD and the Godfather’s wife

Poor Claire was freezing in the backpacker’s paradise squat suite but managed to finish off her 3 books in 1 that didn’t actually get wet in the downpour in Woopi as we had a little shelter and the wind was blowing in the right direction. When we nipped to the bar to claim our two free glasses of champagne we realized that it wasn’t your average backpacker’s that were staying there, more your average dropouts. They weren’t proper backpackers like you get in Australia at all; we were probably more like backpacker’s than any of the others there. On our way back to our room, Claire got talking to an old Chinese looking lady that was staying next door to us who had been crying and looked very sad. She turned out to be in a desperate state, in the middle of a divorce and on holiday from Tahiti. To cut a long story short, after 3 or 4 knocks on the door that evening and lots more tears, Claire gave her $20 to help sort her situation out. I heard some commotion outside and went to investigate. There were 3 LA policemen going around with the manager trying all the doors near us with a master key. The lady next door had gone missing and I started to worry about her and after thinking for a while in the room, I went out to talk to the manager. I thought either she had done something silly or had been evicted as she had no money left for the room. It turned out that the police were looking for someone that had sprung parole and the old lady was ok until the morning when her rent ran out.

She knocked on the door again later but Claire was asleep in front of the TV and I was on the way too so I told her to go back to her room and promised to see her before we left in the morning. My, that was a long Friday but we both slept straight through until a knock at the door woke us both at 6.30am. We didn’t answer it but got up shortly afterwards to get a cup of tea from the café area. They had also put on snacks in the bar the night before but it was the usual, chips, nacho’s, rice fried potatoes and cake. They also have free muffins with tea had coffee in the morning so you could live quite cheaply there, if not that healthy. Claire and I had decided to pay for one more night at the backpackers for the old lady so she had another day to sort herself out and she was very relieved and grateful. We are both a little soft in the head when it comes to things like that but would rather be charitable to people we meet than donate to unknowns on a regular basis.

We got the free shuttle back to the airport to pick up another free shuttle to pick up our rental car. The car is a Nissan and it doesn’t have a key, you just have to have the key fob in your pocket and it starts with a start button. They were very understanding of our position as we are not sure if we will need to come home early so they have let us rent the car until out flight date but will also let us bring it back earlier if we need to reschedule our flight earlier. He even said that if we only have the car for one day, he will only charge us for the one day so that’s a weight off our minds. Hopefully my Aunt Daphne is on her way to recovery now and we can come home when we were scheduled to.

We eventually got the satnav going and were on our way driving through LA which is massive; I believe that the city of LA is the same size as Denmark so we would have struggled to negotiate it without it working. It wasn’t long before the traffic snarled up and our route had been cut off by a truck accident but the satnav took it in its stride when we got off our proper route. It took literally hours to get out of LA and we were in desert with scrub and Joshua trees. We were both starving as the last proper meal that we had was the Indian in Brisbane on the Thursday and it was now Saturday and we also had at least two Friday’s, if not more. We had eaten airport stuff but were in need of something proper. We stopped of at a town and headed straight to Denny’s as I remember it from 30 years ago as being great and they were “always open”. Unfortunately, either Denny’s or I have changed in the last 30 years; probably both. It was mainly the usual staple diet of America, burgers with different stuff in them all with crinkle cut chips. Never mind, maybe we will find something proper to eat on Sunday. We also spotted an outlet clothes mall so had a look around there where I managed to get two cheap shirts but Claire couldn’t find anything she liked.

We stopped again for petrol and water and picked up some leaflets and booklets with discount vouchers for hotel in Vegas so Claire could chose where she wanted to stay the night. We didn’t stop and change the satnav again but Claire managed to get us there from the instructions on the voucher. We decided to stay in Vegas rather than LA for the weekend but refrained from stopping in a casino hotel until the week when it’s cheaper. Claire chose a Best Western, just off the strip and with the voucher we are only paying $40 a night which I can hardly believe; maybe we won’t stop on the strip after all.

Just before we got to Vegas we spotted, what looked like clouds but turned out to be mountains; I don’t think the photo shows quite how it looked. Claire had a power nap in the car and I almost did too with the cruise control on driving through the desert for hours are quite tiring. Once unpacked Claire wanted to go out but I thought it would be better to have a quiet night and go out tomorrow but Claire insisted. We got the free shuttle to the Hard Rock Casino and Claire hated it, saying, “Why did you bring me here, you know I’m a country girl”. It was a difficult question to answer, but I suggested that we went to the Hard Rock Café, rather than the casino; boy how things have changed in the last 30 years. Claire didn’t seem to like the café either, until it all stopped and the staff broke into YMCA; I thought they were going to sing, “Happy Birthday”, it was ridiculous! The main staff member stood on the corner of the hand rail and did all the motions and it wasn’t long before the crowd joined in; even Claire got up and danced with the hard core punters.

We left happy, but now we needed something to eat so dashed across the 12 lane highway to the new Italian restaurant on the other side of the road. We seemed to walk all the way around it but couldn’t find the entrance. Maybe we drank more than we thought but asked someone and they pointed to an unmarked door. We went in and sat at the bar but ordered an awful Italian white; I had forgotten that all Italian wine was rubbish. Never mind, Claire seemed to like the old fashioned band on stage and it wasn’t long before she moved to the front table and started to dance. The first dance was short lived but she soon found her soul mate that was about the same size as her and was waiting for her husband to come out a meeting. There was a spark between Claire and her new found friend but it was difficult to catch it in a snap shot so I switched the camera over to video. It was all too late, the song came to an end and the meeting must have ended because all these, well dressed Italian men came out at once. François was Claire’s new best friend’s husband but he could hardly look at us. His wife changed and stayed by his side, the band stopped and sucked up to him, as did the staff and manager. She introduced him to us formally but he could barely bring himself to smile. I think Claire’s new best friend was the Godfather’s wife! What a shame we didn’t have time to give her our blogsite address; but then again, I guess they already know about it!