by Rosi
Greetings from sunny Los Angeles, California! I’ve been a bit busy as of late, driving almost 3000 miles around 7 states by myself over the course of 2 weeks (more on that later!), but I’m currently sat in an airport lounge waiting to board a plane back to London, stuffing myself with cookies whilst simultaneously bemoaning the fact that I’m going to have to start dieting the second I land at Heathrow, and thought it might be a good idea to start doing airport lounge reviews on this here blog. Because why not?
It’s no secret that I love airports – so much so that I decided to invest in a Priority Pass a few months ago. The PP allows me complimentary access to pretty much any airport lounge (bar business/upper class), guests costing only £15, and was about £70 for the year, as I recall. This is an absolute bargain, especially considering lounge access alone is usually £40 a pop (and you can usually find a great deal on Groupon for the annual pass, shh!)…
As soon as I got to LAX and had sold my soul to TSA for easy security access, I immediately had a look at lounges. Annoyingly, there were only two that I could see on the app – the Virgin Atlantic clubhouse all the way over in Terminal 5, and conveniently the Air Canada Maple Leaf lounge in Terminal 2, which was a few steps away. I showed the lady on the reception desk my pretentiousness black and gold PP card, signed some document to prove that I was a human being and not some buffet-devouring robot (little does she know), and then entered the lounge.
It’s quite a spacious lounge, and immediately I noticed the plethora of alcoholic drinks and mixers available (of course). The food choices were somewhat lacking – couscous kale salad, houmous, salad, tortilla chips, apples and cookies – but the drink selection more than made up for it. It was probably a good thing that the food selection was small and relatively healthy – after two weeks of eating waffles and gas station sandwiches, I felt like Gwyneth tucking into couscous salad with kale. Jesus, what have I become?
The entertainment options were slightly lacking – a few magazines, the TV set on CNN where the glorious Anderson Cooper was discussing Trump and the whole FBI debacle, free Wifi… however, there were also complimentary showers which was a nice touch (most other lounges charge for this). Free unlimited Wifi throughout the lounge with quite a good connection, and a standalone charging station with no time limit (thank GOD) which was also free to use.
All in all, worth going to if you’re bored at LAX and don’t mind paying a fee if you’re non-PP (from memory I think the woman mentioned it was $45 to the people behind me).
Drink selection: 4/5
Food selection: 2/5
Entertainment: 2/5
Technology (free Wifi, charging stations etc): 4/5
rosi roams 