Recently I have been doing a lot of writing - seven days a week and more than twelve hours a day - and I realised that at the end my mind would explode. It was time for a vacation; so I decided to spend one week in Los Angeles, with no archaeology, no writing - nothing.

I had a great time in Los Angeles and met with many wonderful people. When my friend Wayne Reynolds and his wife Catherine learnt that I was coming to Los Angeles they organised a wonderful dinner for me at a beautiful downtown restaurant. Wayne and his wife are in charge of the American Academy of Achievement who gave me a Golden Plate Award a few years ago at a beautiful celebration in London. It was great to see my friend Tim Leiweke, the President of AEG, along with other good friends at the dinner, and I also had a chance to meet Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and his girlfriend, Lu, for the first time.

At another dinner, hosted by my friend Russell Armstrong and his wife, I met Jermaine Jackson of the Jackson 5, and his wife Halima, who told me that they had fallen in love after meeting in a Starbucks! Jermaine became a Muslim ten years ago, and I was happy to hear that Jermaine did not become a Muslim just to marry Halima, but because of his faith. We had a lovely dinner and I was interviewed for the Michael Jackson Channel. The actress Jacqueline Bisset was also at the dinner. When I was young she starred in one of my favourite movies with Steve McQueen called Bullitt. It became a dream of mine to meet her, then, a few years ago, she came to the Cairo Film Festival. We became close friends, and I took them to Luxor to see the tombs of Seti I and Nefertari. She enjoyed it so much that she started singing. After this, whenever I would go to London or Los Angeles we would meet up and have dinner together; when I went to the opening of the Tutankhamun exhibition in London, I invited her to come.

When I arrived in Los Angeles on the 8^th August it was my friend José Nazar’s birthday; a man who I met more than twenty years ago, and who has spent his life trying to help Spanish speakers learn English. He invited me and other friends to a party at which we watched the opera Aida on a huge screen at his house. Although I have seen this opera over one hundred times, this was the first time that I had watched it with subtitles so that I could understand each word of the beautiful three hour performance.