Our departure was out of LAX so we had the option of driving and leaving a car or taking the train to Union Station and then Lyfting to the airport. Neither was a very exciting option but since we were looking at many hours of airplanes it seemed like the train would be them most free range option.


Of course the train was late - actually the train before our train was late for our departure time. Ours did eventually come along and we had a relaxing ride up the coast with a slight delay from a train/big rig incident on the track ahead. We arrived at union station with five hours until takeoff.


A map check showed the Los Angeles Metro ran from LAX (train) to LAX (plane) with a mere three changeovers. Given the time we had and traffic around downtown, it seemed like the metro would be better than a Lyft. We took the red line two stops and made it to the dark blue line (not the light blue line, mind you). We intended to ride down to the green line which would take us close enough to LAX to catch their connection shuttle. Simple. Except when we get on the dark blue line, a sign in the train indicated construction left the track closed a few stops short of the green line. So we rode the dark blue line to its end, which happened to be Watts Towers, and then took a Lyft for the final stretch. The freeway part wasn't too bad, but it took us a solid thirty minutes to get from the airport entrance to the departures.

Check-in went easy, and we breezed through security since I guess not many international travelers have precheck. An early (07:30) departure and constant travel since had left us both fairly hungry. We went for calories since the airplane meal/time was a bit of an unknown, and Chang's noodles and honey chicked did the job.

Boarding was super smooth since the A380 had three doors open and we were in the upper deck. Naturally, they served us dinner as soon as we got to altitude, so we at what we could put down.


Okay, the coolest obvious idea ever: have cameras mounted on the nose, tail, and underbelly and let people watch the feed from their seats.