From Chicago to Los Angeles: A Tale of Two Men

It was shortly after 9/11... people were scared to fly anywhere in the United States. The terrorist attacks that shocked our country left the travel industry in a mess. For those of us who weren't scared it was a great time to travel. Airline fares were slashed to ridiculously low prices and if you could get the time off and had some extra funds that was the time to go.

My friend Daniel and I had joked around about getting out of town one of these days and I was looking on a travel website - I believe it was Orbitz.com and I saw that there were flights to Los Angeles from Chicago for $109 round-trip. I did a double-take. I called up my friend and asked him if he wanted to go and spend a few days in Los Angeles. After I told him the price of course he was like let's do it! So we booked our tickets and a few weeks later off we went.

We left in mid-November to Los Angeles for a few days. I remember we flew out of Chicago's Midway airport and we had to fly into Cleveland at first; that's just how the connections were. Hey, for $109 I don't mind flying backwards in order to get where I need to go. We left on a Thursday morning and got into L.A. before noon even with the extra mileage. We went to get our rental car, which wasn't much of a rental car. It was white and we had to manually let the windows down if we wanted air, but hey it got us around. We stayed at a Days Inn in a hood part of town off of downtown. The hotel stay wasn't glamorous by any stretch but it was suitable for our budget.

As far as sightseeing, we had a great tour guide. One of my friends from college helped us get around while we were in Los Angeles. She had just moved to the L.A. area so she was a great person to help us know what things to do; I think though we helped her see a few things as well. Some of our stops included the pier at Santa Monica... the Staples Center for a L.A. Clippers game... driving through Hollywood and North Hollywood... and a stop at Benihana's for dinner one night in Beverly Hills.

Los Angeles is a great city to go to if you want to see how the entertainment industry lives. If you like sunny all the time, you should definitely consider visiting there. With its palm trees and mountain views Los Angeles is a great city, especially if it's cold during where you are when you decide to visit. My biggest problem with Los Angeles was the traffic. I had a couple of instances where the traffic there caused me headaches, literally. I'd never seen congestion like that before. I know it can get bad in Chicago, but I'd never seen anything like Los Angeles traffic; just brutal!

We had a great time while we were in Los Angeles. For us, it was just a time to get away from life. We'd worked together in a number of ways but we just took a few days to be two guys (and a tour guide) and have fun away from home. We're both in different stages of life now but if we had it to all over again I wouldn't change anything about the journey... except maybe a direct flight to Los Angeles.