Friday May 10: Valley of Fire
We discussed it on ECN since February I think and I managed to get 2 more people interested in taking this trip with me: Allen Ward and Mark Browne. Since it was only an hour North of Las Vegas we decided not to start the day too early and we had a small but tasty little breakfast at “Cafe Presse”, next to the V-bar (there are more than 1 in the Venetian/Palazzo building). We rented a VW Jetta (I think) and we drove off to our little 1 day adventure. The more we drove away from Vegas, the more the desert and its heat impressed us. It took about half an hour to reach the highway exit and another half an hour on a bumpy road to reach the National Park entry point. The sight was amazing. Red rock everywhere you looked, but also red, grey and I even spotted some blue and yellow.
The title suggests a lot, but in fact I only had a 3 hour stop at LAX. We flew South from Las Vegas towards Primm, which I visited 2 days before, and then crossing the hills towards LA. We landed in a little fog, but I managed to see the “Hollywood” letters on the Hollywood Hills as well as the LA city skyscrapers. To my surprise my arrival gate and my departure gate were only 6 gates or so apart from each other and since WiFi worked just fine I found myself making updates to Facebook and Twitter a bit. My flight back to Europe was supposed to be a 747 and to my surprise the information said it was a 777. Well, I didn’t think too much of it until it dawned on me that the departure time didn’t check out as well.
I was at the wrong gate! With only 1 hour left I rushed to get more information, but that’s something I disliked about that airport: no clear directions anywhere. So I went outside, asked a cab driver and found my way to the next pier. Going through security again was nerve wrecking, but I got to my gate on time without any problems. This time I was able to relax.
Anyway… Seeing British airspace again and flying over London and seeing European style houses made me feel at home, even if I was still hours from home. My layover on Heathrow was only 90 minutes and although the transfer from the one plane to the next seemed fast at first I totally forgot the fact that I needed to go through security again. Luckily the friendly people in front of me were willing to let me pass and I made it in time to the next gate.
Wednesday started with breakfast in the great food room in the basement. I don’t know any other name for this enormous place. And for the second time this week I ran into 
Follow me on social media