7/19 Bus Tours

Today’s a little bit crazy. We were scheduled to return the car at around 930, and last night I’ve checked that it’s around 30 minutes drive from our place Fountain Valley to the Car Rental Place, but this morning when I checked again, it changed to 1 hour and 25 minutes due to the morning traffic jam. 

This is just crazy and there’s no way we are going to pay an extra fee for returning the car late due to the bad traffic. 

So we left as soon as we can, pump a 6 dollar gas and hit the road, going as fast as we can and even leaving the high speed freeway because of the traffic. 

Eventually we made it and was only around 10 minutes late. Luckily the guy was dealing with an old couple and was busy at the moment so he just told us to wait. Returning the car was quite smooth, we were charged with an extra 125 dollars for the over mileage of 500 miles (25 cents per mile), because we only have the credit of 1500 miles but we went over to 2200 miles in one week, yeah that’s how far I have driven and it’s crazy. But the guy was pretty nice and only counted the extra of 500 instead of 700. After leaving the car rental place, we decided to go to downtown.

        

Firstly we took the bus and entered downtown, bus between bus took around a 30-minute waiting time and we had no way but to stand under the sun. 

That was a bit exhausting. Then we entered the Union Station, shared a foot-long cheese steak sub and hit the metro, did 1 transfer and these rides took us like half a day long. For many of our rides heading toward Long Beach broke down or stopped and started flashing the Not In Service light all of a sudden and we had to get off and wait for the next one.

        

Then we arrived at Long Beach and started walking toward the beach. We were at the beach yesterday and we thought it would be fun to come back again since it’s just on the way, to have a it more of the sun and ocean and fresh air. 

However, when we were approaching the water, one of the lifeguards told us that the beach has been shut down due to water contamination! What! And that’s why yesterday when we were at the beach there was this weird smell and the sand appeared to be golden (the little bits were actually metal components) but there were no lifeguard at that time so it was quite fun at the beach.

        

So we just walked around and get the bus, did two transfers and finally arrived at Fountain Valley. We had Carl’s Junior for dinner and it was very cheap, two burgers with Fountain drink, one small fries and only 4 dollars. Finally we got home and relaxed, tomorrow’s gonna be an exhausting day.