So far the phrase of the trip is "Shut the front door". We were at the tar pits outside the LACMA Museum in L.A. with Aliza and Lucca staring down at the bubbly bog which holds the bones and fossils of creatures thousands of years old. Beside us was a large African American woman who wondered what the strange smell was and we hypothesised that it was sulphur escaping from the middle of the earth. Her response was an incredulous "Shut the front door". This totally inexplicable phrase seemed to sum up so much and so little at the same time.