We have conceded on this site that accounts of long, draining travel are nearly always boring. Meaningless to all but those who survived them.

And yet, we keep talking about them. Because they are so intense.

Like our 31-hour door-to-door trip from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles or, to be exact, to San Clemente, south of L.A.

We did that today. Out the door in Abu Dhabi at 12:30 a.m. July 1, and in the door of where we were staying in California, halfway around the world, at 7:30 p.m. (Pacific Coast time) on the same interminable day.

A few noteworthy bits:

–Always better to leave Abu Dhabi in the middle of the night, when going west. You might be able to catch a few winks on the plane, and it’s easier to move around in the UAE in the middle of the night.

–Goodness, do I hate packed planes. Just a few empty seats makes such a difference; the sense of claustrophobia diminishes significantly. But this Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul … a sellout, from what I could see, and it was an Airbus 330 — the Euro version of the Boeing 747. A big plane. With lots and lots of people who apparently want out of Abu Dhabi during July. Well, of course they do.

–We almost missed the flight. It was meant to leave at 2:55 a.m., but it was late, and we found ourselves dozing in the waiting area as the time rolled on — and we woke with a start to realize there was no one around us. The flight data boards still showed no “remarks” behind the Istanbul flight — no “boarding”, no “final call”. We were supposed to divine the plane was loading, in the middle of the night, when some people might be drifting off. We got to the gate just as they were (presumably) beginning to search for us, and we dealt with some snotty remarks from one not-quite-competent, child-like ground agent, but we made it — two of the last 4-5 people on the plane, and forced to make do without sufficient overhead baggage space.

–A general comment: Abu Dhabi’s airport, which was a simple, one-terminal thing when we arrived less than six years ago, is expanding rapidly, and I suppose it is a credit to planners that planes and people still come and go, but there is a sense of an airport that is growing faster than builders can keep up.

–Most of five hours later, we were in Istanbul, which has one of the busiest, most frenetic, close-to-being-overwhelmed airports around. (Though Abu Dhabi is a competitor.) I’ve been through Ataturk half a dozen times, and on every occasion the concourse has been jammed with people, and hundreds of travelers end up sitting on the floor — because they have no alternatives.

–New-ish concept (to us, anyway): Looking for corporate-backed airport lounges and buying your way in. HSBC, the awful bank with which we do business, has its own lounge in Ataturk, and for about $20 each we bought our way past the front desk. Good call. Lots of drinks options (including beer and wine, at 9 a.m.), finger food and other snacks, comfy chairs, some couches that a few people could sleep on, clean restrooms, newspapers and, crucial, of course — wifi. All that was key for a six-hour layover that didn’t seem nearly that long.

–Why would someone in Abu Dhabi not take the Etihad nonstop to Los Angeles? For three reasons: To break up the 16.5 hours of punishment inside one plane; because the two Turkish flights were significantly cheaper than the nonstop; and to take advantage of the “premium economy” class Turkish offers but Etihad does not. The plane from Istanbul was a Boeing 777, which is a torture device, in economy — maybe 40 rows of a 3-4-3 configuration, which produces an experience not far from being in a straitjacket for half a day. Premium economy, on Turkish, however, is more like “junior business”. Big seats, nine rows of a 2-3-2 configuration, special treatment, and seats that recline about 45 degrees, allowing something resembling sleep. It cost about $300 each to make the upgrade, and when you are a certain age, it is worth it. Another crammed plane, by the by.

–Finally on the ground, and if we were not so limp we might have been angry that the plane sat, motionless, for 30 minutes while waiting for a jetway to clear at the revamped (finally) Bradley Terminal.

–Counting the time sitting 100 yards from an exit, we needed two full hours to reach the street, at LAX. The airport is not the civic embarrassment it was even a year ago, but the new systems (including a semi-automated passport check for U.S. citizens) didn’t seem to save us any time at all. We still had to go to an officer doing a passport check. And then our luggage showed up even later than we did. (Maybe a bunch of jumbos landed in the same 30-minute time frame?) Then through the customs line, where we confessed to our “hard cheese” in a bag, and were sent on out into the chaos of the 1) reception area (maybe 1,000 people waiting) and 2) the scrum around the “waiting for rental car vans” stops. Just what you need at the point in the trip.

–The positive bit of the trip, came at the end, and was welcome: The Los Angeles freeways were remarkably, shockingly not-crowded, and this was at 6-7 p.m. We did 55 mph nearly the whole of the 70-minute drive to south Orange County. By then, we needed it.

Then into a kindly relative’s home, as night fell, some liquid refreshment and some conversation and blissful unconsciousness — albeit jet-lag shortened) on a firm mattress in an air-conditioned room.

It seems churlish and ungrateful, I know, to have complaints at so many levels of travel. Why do it, if it’s such a test?

And, hey, to make the trip from the Arabian Peninsula to Los Angeles probably would have taken two months, via ship, 100 years ago, and something more like six months, 200 years ago — with significant danger.

But travel, the actual moving bit of it, is an ordeal for nearly everyone. We may not want to hear each other’s stories, but we realize that every traveler has one.