The family from Kuwait

Our LA escape hotel was in the LAX class. We hotwired and got a nice price on an "older" Holiday Inn.

Next to the Holiday Inn and with easy walking distance of many large hotels is the only Mc Donald's in the area. Housed in a tight two level building it had a constant single posted drive through that intersected with the alley on Cieniga Blvd.

Sue wanted a small hamburger and a parfait for dinner. I walked over and encountered the United Nations of LAX. There were Russian families with kids. There were French couples and German couples and a large extended family of people from Kuwait, as I was later to discover.

One of them tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if they should go to San Francisco the next day. The wanted to know the major attractions. They made it clear they were not "museum types." The younger couple had a baby. He was the driver. He was interested in theme parks. The older couple, about my age were interested in shopping and fishing.

The driver was interested in talking about the world. He wanted to know if there was a way to save their receipts from California and trade them in for a refund of the taxes that they had paid. I was not aware of this program. Apparently in Texas there is such a program. I know from experience in Italy there is a way to get the taxes back at the airport.

The driver wanted to know why we paid so much for gas. He claimed that in Kuwait they pay about 1 dollar a gallon for gas.. the older man said that that was for a liter... he thought that gas was cheaper than the oil that it came from. I said that the king was trying to buy them off so that they would not want freedom similar to Saudi Arabia. Oh you know about Saudis? They retorted. Yes. That was the end of that part of the conversation.

They are encouraged to have more children. The government gives bonuses to people that have kids. Some families the Kuwaits said have as many as 20 kids.

When asked why they were here. They said that they were visiting their daughter who was a student in Tempe Arizona. They understood heat and dessert.

The next day we stopped at the gas station at the foot of the hill in Grapevine. The Kuwait family came out of their cars to head in. They all recognized me and came over to shake my hand again. They were headed to San Francisco. Cool.

I need a rebate from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce!

: ) Pat