Los Angeles - Santa Monica Pier and US first impressions

After a long flight and quite daunting boarder check, I finally arrived in the US of A. I don't have great first impressions of this country, people honking and shouting at each other, dirty bus to the train station arrived 20 minutes late and we had to reverse pay for the ride at the counter at the end, there was no card reader to pay so I just contactless paid it to the employees phone, which might have as well went to her private account. Then I jumped into equally dirty and obscure metro which eventually got me into my hostel, it had lockers but no padlocks so I went to buy one in a liquor store, where its initial price of $2.99 turned into $3.37 "after tax" and it's seems to be the case with all the prices here. After dumping my backpack in the locker I took metro to Santa Monica beach where REI hiking store is and managed to buy a water filter and water purifying tablets for PCT.

Everything here seems to be so empty and disconnected from each other, and it might be due to the fact that there's so much 'space' - LA is huge, so it feels way less crowded than any European city. On my way to Santa Monica I felt like I was passing through many different cities patched together into this giant monstrosity - the beach itself was great though, especially the Pier was a welcome change to what I've experienced so far, very lively and colourful, people dancing, singing and just enjoying themselves.

After returning to the hostel I had few tacos ($2 each) sold on the city corner by the Mexican family from the neighborhood (they were blocking half of the sidewalk with their stand, heh). Hostel itself is run by Russians, so Andriey showed me around but didn't explain much as he himself is leaving in USA for only two years. Then during my Mexican supper I had a chat with Meg, 51 year old woman from Manchester, UK who is experiencing spiritual awakening, she has spoken to Jesus and now he is speaking through her, Jesus told her to go on a spiritual journey to America, she also sees ghosts. Funnily enough the conversation was pretty interesting, and she seemed quite reasonable despite all of the above. Next time I looked at my watch it was 22:30 and time for bed, so I washed myself and went to my shared room of eight people (but only five staying in and I'm happy to report that no one was snoring!) Guy on a bunk bed above me set his alarm for 4am, which he mentioned to us before going to bed, alarm event off half an hour ago and he is still in bed awake at 4:40 (I know that because I told him at 4:15 that his alarm went off and he just murmured something and nodded his head in return). I guess he just likes to wake up early and stare into the ceiling.

It's probably my tiredness speaking but I never expected to experience such a culture shock after arriving here - Europe seems like cozy, well behaved haven compared to what I've seen here so far, but it's not necessarily all that bad. There's a method in this madness, I'm sure :)

Few snaps from the Santa Monica beach, oh hello Atlantic:

And a video of the guy dancing here, his moves reminded me of Les Twins.

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