Monday, April 1, 2013

Be a traveller


I read a great quote on facebook today that I wanted to share with you.

"Please be a traveller, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people and look beyond what's right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in." - Andrew Zimmern

I am lucky, in many ways, but specifically one of my best friends lives in an amazing city - Los Angeles. Because of its size and complexity, you can visit LA many times and never see the same thing twice. That is one of the many things I love about going to visit - always something new to see, do and experience. This past visit was no exception.

One of my days there we went to the California Science Center to see the Space Shuttle Endeavor (separate post to follow). After that, it was such a beautiful day, that we decided to go to the beach for the afternoon. En route to the beach my friend told me we were going to take a detour that there was something he wanted to show me.

We were driving towards LAX airport. We stopped at an In and Out burger for a bite to eat. That was not the attraction, but it was busy enough to be.

There was a park right beside the restaurant, and lo and behold - the park sits right on the flight landing path of all the large planes that land at LAX.

It was a great little parkette area, with the burger place on the left, and the freeway on the right and a billboard on a roof of a strip of stores in front of you. Everyone had their heads turned towards the billboard, because if you were watching, you would see the planes come from what appeared to be out of nowhere, to be right on top of you, over your head, like they were just touching the tops of the trees. I would suspect that the planes are probably flying about the height of my condo building which is about 20 stories in height. Landing gear already down as you can see by the photo below.

There were small planes, like the little Southwest plane that I saw land with ease, or the larger 777 British Airways or even the A380 Air France or Emaretes Airlines jumbo jets.

I think the interesting thing is that it really is something to see, and something that you wouldn't experience every day. If you were a tourist visiting LA, finding the place to watch where the planes land, would not be the first thing you would want to do on your trip to LA, but if you were brought there by a local, you would be really glad that you made the stop.

It was a great place to stop and I am happy that I had the chance to experience it. I have already talked about it with clients planning a trip to LA and I would love to go back there again some day. But...for now, there are more things to see and do in LA and more experiences to be created!



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