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  • Day 2 in PV: Saturday, Feb 17

    Day 2 in PV: Saturday, Feb 17

    It’s about 9:20am Sunday morning and I’m writing this at Jon’s. The WiFi at the hotel has been down since yesterday evening so I’m feeling very behind. Will see if I get can this done in record time! I didn’t do much yesterday but still wound up with 62 photos uploaded. We’ll see if I end up with that many; sometimes I delete as I go.

    I definitely slept better Friday night, 7.5 hours at least, waking up at 6:45. I finished Friday’s blog then went out about 9:30 to walk a bit before going to Jon’s. 

    I went back to the Malecon and sat here to meditate a bit; nothing like the waves crashing against the rocks, and it was early enough where there weren’t too many people out. This is right behind the seahorse PV sign, which you see to my right below.



    And here it is again. Many of the photos today are more for my purposes of trying to find my bearings in this town, which got much better today. From here, I walked 2 blocks behind me to Gaby’s as seen below.
     This is on the same street as my hotel. See the stairs? Up we go.
     First landing.
     Looking back at the 2nd landing.
     This is Jon’s building to the left at the top of the stairs, middle balcony mid photo.
     The balcony from the inside. The slatted French doors are all there is and he says he never closes them. There’s no need for a heater so he doesn’t have one.
    The living room as you walk in.
     
     His bedroom. The painting he had in his Sacramento homes, done by his friend Bill who I met Friday night.
     Looking back towards the living room from the kitchen.
     He fixed a nice little brunch for us – an egg and carnitas scramble with onions and peppers, beans, and at tamale.
     Jon with his boyfriend Pedro in the kitchen. We had a nice visit over brunch, I enjoyed meeting him a lot. Very smart and a good conversationalist.
     Pedro left and Jon and I went for a long walk. This is down his street and around the corner, the most famous bridge in PV probably. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton stayed in hotels on opposite sides of the street when they were here to film The Night of the Iguana, and had the bridge built to go back and forth. You can read all it about it here if you’re interested.
     A sculpture of them behind the gate. The Burton side is still a hotel, this is the Taylor side and is now a high end restaurant.
     A stable bridge over the river! I’d seen this on Friday and almost went up it then chose a different route. Now I know where it went to! Jon lives an in area called Gringo Gulch due to the number of expatriates who have lived here over the years.

     

     Above is the Cultural Center as shown on the map. On Friday when I’d taken the photo showing the homes and commenting on the divide between those and the poor neighborhood I’d just left, I was taking a photo of homes in Gringo Gulch standing about in this spot looking up and to the left of this photo.

     We went back into the neighborhood we had dinner in on Thursday, and I was in this area yesterday, too, just disoriented. This was helping me get my bearings. We stopped in a little farmers market, above and below.

     

     We made our way to the beach. This is Blue Chairs beach club, where Jon usually goes to hang out with his friends. I lost count of the number of times Jon stopped to talk to someone he knew as we were walking around – 10 or more. He’s collected a lot of people over 35 years of visiting and living here on and off. And here’s another he’s greeting on the left above.
     We walked down to the beach and over to another club called Swells and sat for about an hour. We ended up sharing a table with a woman who was by herself, Arlene from Canada who is living here for 6 months, and had a nice visit with her. This was our view, below.
     This is part of Basilio Badillo, the street I’ve been on probably the most frequently. Both the mole place and the spot we got ice cream on Friday is here. And somehow I just this time noticed this little market across the street.
     The same park we were at Friday night from another angle, and where I’m headed again this morning.
     Just another of those street shots I like.
     Jon and I parted ways around 3:15 and I started walking in a new area, north of where I’d been so far. I went back to the Malecon to begin. Above – I’d passed this sand sculpture a couple of times before but this was the first time I was able to get a good photo of it. Below, I had only been in this section before when it was dark, morning or evening; it looks quite different and more beautiful during the day.

     

     Above and below: a little square, some locals hanging about. My first indication I might be leaving the tourist area.

     

     You know you’re out of the tourist area when you get to a car dealership!
     Above and below: I came across a sports complex where there was what appeared to be a girls softball tournament going on; I’d passed a team from Rutgers.

     

     It also had outdoor racquetball being used by some locals.
     I came across this interesting cemetery. While I only explored a little, the oldest date of death I found was 1946. Below, there were several of these spaced out on the outside walls.

     

     

     

     Lots of graves with Our Lady of Guadalupe.
     It was a tiny bit on a hill and you can see some into the surrounding neighborhood.
     This had a live garden planted around it!
     Just a few blocks from my hotel but on the side I hadn’t been before, I came across a nice little art gallery Corsica.

     

     

     It had a nice courtyard with more art upstairs.

     

     I noticed this as I was coming back downstairs: an interesting juxtaposition of poverty amidst wealthy. Most of these paintings were going for $5000 USD.
     I really liked these, done in resin, which I can’t say I’d heard of until Pedro was talking about it at breakfast. He’s an art major and has been doing some work in resin.

     

     

     
     Interesting street art.
     Above: the same sculpture garden on the Malecon in the background, taken from where I’m about to turn on my street; as seen below, the church in the background.

     

    I went back to the room to rest for a bit and had dinner at a place just a couple of blocks away. It was very dark and difficult to get photos. The salsa was very fresh – made at your table!. I had a ceviche with mahi-mahi, basil and lime juice. And Al Pastor shrimp, in a sort of enchilada sauce with grilled pineapple.

    After dinner I just read my book (Pat Conroy, Lords of Discipline) since the WiFi was down and got a good nights sleep.

    And that’s it! Finished this in record time and time to go. No time to proof so excuse the typos :)

  • Day 1 in PV: Friday, Feb 16

    Day 1 in PV: Friday, Feb 16

    What is that noise? Where am I?

    Those were my first thoughts when I woke up yesterday at 3:30am, annoyingly to the alarm I’d set to catch the 6am flight the day before, not realizing it was still active. And it took me a second to remember where I was. I tried to go back to sleep but my body generally doesn’t work that way and this was no exception. Breakfast isn’t until 8am in this hotel (such slackers I tell you!) so I had a lot of time to kill. I did some emails and banking tasks, went up to the deck on the top floor and read some. Tried to go back to sleep up there but that wasn’t happening so I decided to go for a walk and went out about 6:30.

    This is the Church of our Lady of Guadalupe, probably the best known and easiest to spot landmark in the city, and about 2 blocks from my hotel on the same street. Construction started in 1921 but wasn’t completed until 1940, with progress halting during a 3 year war between church and state. The crown was added in 1965 and resembles the crown seen on Our Lady of Fatima statues.

     It was nicely lit up at 6:30 in the morning, but not open. Some of these photos I look later in the morning.

     

     

     

     Depicting the church’s namesake, Our Lady of Guadalupe, this is to your right after you enter the main doors. And by the way, if you’re not familiar with the Juan Diego story, it’s a nice read. Having attended a Catholic school that was largely Hispanic I was very familiar with it.

    As I leave my hotel, the church is two blocks to my left. The Malecon, a mile long boardwalk along the beach, is 3 blocks in front of me. The seahorse in the center of this photo is another famous PV landmark; Jon says the PV sign was just added a year or two ago. You’ll see a much different scene here at the end, but there weren’t many folks around. Although there were more folks than you might expect out running or walking their dogs at 6:30am, there were few enough to allow me to get this people-free shot without difficulty.

     There are lots of sculptures along the way. The one above is a like a garden; the one below I found particularly interesting in that cluster.

     

     Above and below, just a couple more of the art pieces I liked along the way: a couple of mer-people, and an alien-like couple.

     

     Above: probably about 7am and the sun was starting to rise. Below: a pair of PV dancers.

     

     I took a few shots like this today. Nothing to see particularly, just a look I like that seems to capture the overall feel.
     Above: the beginning of my block on Calle Hidalgo. I was trying to capture the stairs on either side that go up to the homes built into the hill but it didn’t quite come out. Below: my hotel. That deck you see at the top is where I was killing time in the morning.

     

     Above and below: my view at breakfast, and where I’m sitting again this morning as I write this. [And this morning there’s a whale out there entertaining the breakfast crowd!] Breakfast was really simple and I didn’t eat much, just some pineapple, a yogurt, and some potatoes that were cooked nicely with onions.

     

     Taken on my second morning walk, above is an outdoor theater which is part of a public square. I didn’t know at the time that this is where Jon and I would be coming in the evening. We sat right there on the bleachers on the right to eat our dinner.
     Sign at a restaurant I found amusing. [For those using screen readers it says: Keep calm, you’re on the fun side of Trump’s wall.]
    The point of this trip was to spend some time with Jon, check out someplace I’d never been, and relax without a jammed packed agenda. There are a ton of places to get cheap massages here so I decided that would be a fitting way to start. A 2 hour session that actually went 2.5 hours included a sea salt scrub, massage and facial. I’d never done a facial before, probably wouldn’t again, but it was part of the package. And all for a whopping $70 or so US dollars. It was a nice way to smooth out the edges from 2 nights in a row of not great sleep. By the time I was done there it was about Noon so I kept wandering to find a place for lunch.

     

     I stopped at El Mole de Jovita, which specializes in, duh, mole. It seems like I’d had mole before but couldn’t quite remember it, vaguely remember thinking I didn’t care for it much. But figured here it would probably be better than anything I’d tried in the States so was worth a try. They start with chips and a sampler of 3 moles – OK right there, I thought there was just one kind. The tan one on the right I thought at first was warm refried beans, but is actually a peanut mole. The dark brown in the middle is traditional mole with a chocolate base. I forgot to ask what the green one was based on, some kind of pepper; it was my favorite.

     

    I got a platter which had 2 enchiladas, 2 sopas, 2 crispy tacos, and a tostada. All was yummy and very filling. The enchiladas had the traditional mole on it and it was certainly better than any I may have tried before – I’ll remember it this time! – but it was very rich and I couldn’t finish it. I sat at the table under the sign on the left in the photo below.

     

     Above: the restaurant from the outside.
    I left the restaurant around 1:30 and just started meandering, with no discernable goal. And I discovered a river – didn’t know there was one! The river Cuale, there are some beautiful, tranquil spots carved out in the middle everything. It was a nice find, as seen above and below.

     

     

     I walked around some more, trying to find the restaurant we were at last night but couldn’t. For some reason I’m having trouble getting my bearings here and I’m usually pretty good at getting grounded directionally. I thought finding someplace I’d already been would help so not finding it disoriented me even more! But I enjoyed watching the locals and checking out various shops. Above: local market which spills out onto the sidewalk. Below: a suspension pedestrian bridge over the river which is literally just hanging. As soon as you step on it, it starts to jiggle. It was fine I just wasn’t ready for it so a bit of a surprise. Jon and I walked across 2 different ones later in the day.

     

    Above: the other side of the bridge, some nice residences built into the hills. I was struck by the divide between this view and the very poor neighborhood I’d just left. Below: there’s a little island in the middle of the river which was formed after the river grew into a fork in 1926 and a little island emerged. In 1976 they dredged to make the island permanent and turned it into a nice park with a couple of restaurants on it.

     

     Above: just more street views I liked.

    I went back to the room about 2:30 to rest and maybe take a nap. I may have dozed a little but clearly wasn’t ready or able for a full on nap so by 3:30 decided it was time to head out again. I went back to the Malecon since I hadn’t seen it really since the sun rose and decided it was time for a walk on the beach.

    A decent portion of the beginning of the Malecon runs right next to Banderas Bay. Around the next bend after that palm tree, it starts to decrease in width as it begins to run along beaches. Sort of in the middle, you can see the dolphin fountain which is in the photo below.

     

    I walked along the water essentially until I couldn’t walk anymore, blocked by rocks against a cliff.

     

    A pier which Jon says was just built a few years ago. On the other side of this pier the mix of gay and straight changed dramatically, from maybe 10/90 to 90/10.

     

     Above: approaching the end. Below: a panoramic I took while standing there at the end.

     

     Above: I got off the beach at the pier; positioned the sun behind the larger middle pole to get this shot. Below: the beach view from the same spot as above.

     

    From the pier I just continued walking back into town. I found the art gallery that was on my list of things to do and took a look around. About 80 different local artists, it was packed with all kinds of colorful things, with a sculpture garden in the middle. Jon and I returned to this in the evening, briefly, so he could show me the work of one of this friend’s that I’d met.

    I made it back to my room about 5:15 and got ready to meet Jon at 6. He lives just a few blocks from where I’m staying. We met a friend of his for coffee at a place back down on Olas Altas street, in an area referred to as the Romantic Zone  where I’d spent most of the day. We visited for about an hour then went to an English LGBT 12-Step meeting (all flavors welcome) which is one of Jon’s regular meetings.

    After the meeting we went to the public square I’d come across 2-3x already, where there was a nice mariachi band playing. I’m typically not a big fan of mariachis but this was pretty good and fit the setting. There were a fair number of people gathered, and several tents set up with all different kinds of food. They do this every other Friday. Above: the band; below, Jon standing in line at the place we were getting a bite to eat.

     

     

    Jon has been here before and really liked this food: blue corn quesadillas. As you can see above, very fresh – that’s masa in the green bowl, she presses it out right there into a thick tortilla and throws it on the grill to her right, as seen below.

     

    Above: the crowd and more of the food tents. Below: the food, which we ate in those bleachers I had a photo of earlier. This spot is actually behind there; the band is set up on yet another stage in the park, not the one in front of the bleachers where we are now sitting. The food was great, that tortilla memorable.

    We stopped for ice cream – which was incredible – and walked back along the Malecon. There were some mimes performing in interesting costumes, this one I was fascinated by. I still can’t quite figure out how he did that: appears to be balancing – better yet floating – with only the sword for support. Above and below, he did several poses for us.

     

    Ending in a way where I began: the same PV sign with the boy on the seahorse, as seem at 10pm vs. 6:30am.

    That’s it for Friday. A successful start to a relaxing few days. See you tomorrow.

     

  • Departure: Thursday, Feb 15

    Departure: Thursday, Feb 15

    The year got off to a very busy start. The nature of my job started shifting quickly as a project I’d begun in November 2017 started to take off.  It’s in the area of organizational development – org design, leadership development, succession planning – and much needed since this 40 year old company has never done any of it. So as not to bore all those that aren’t HR geeks, I’ll leave it at that. But it’s exciting stuff and I find myself working a lot of hours without resentment!, which is what happens when work and play start to blend. A few weeks ago my boss said something like “I don’t think I’ve seen you this engaged and happy in this job since you’ve been here” and in response I said “this is the work I thought I was coming here to do, you just weren’t ready for it; it’s an HR person’s wet dream.” So as I enter my 4th year with this company, I’m finally very happy with the direction it’s all headed in, in no small part due to a bunch of heavy lifting I did the first two years, with traction starting to take last year. So I’m excited to see where I can drive this thing.

    Enough of that. If you followed us at Christmas time, you know that we were in limbo somewhat with Dan’s job and that hasn’t really changed. Assuming the Bayer acquisition of Monsanto goes through, he will become an employee of BASF shortly after. The date keeps getting pushed back and we’re now looking at mid-to-late April. Among other things, it makes it difficult to do any travel planning. I started to accrue more vacation time at the beginning of last year and have been managing my time off carefully around holidays, so have accrued enough to be able to do some traveling on my own. Many of you know Jon Scott (I know this for a fact since he shares the most number of “mutual friends” on Facebook at 129) and that he moved to Puerto Vallarta a few years ago. Dan and I visited him at Thanksgiving 2014 when he was living in Cozumel, and he moved to PV the following year. Dan has been to PV before and had no real desire to go back. I’ve been itching to travel anywhere and that sounded like a good trip to make without Dan since he’s grounded for a little while. So here I go: 4 days in PV without much planned other than spending time with Jon and doing some things on my own. I’m not really much of a beach or water person so I really don’t know what I’m going to do there yet and I really don’t care. That many unstructured days in a row is pure heaven to me. People literally gasp when they see my calendar on my phone it’s so crazy full all the time. Especially after putting in lots of hours already this year, I’m ready for some down time.

    And it’s gotten off to a very relaxing start. I had a 6am flight out of Sac to PHX. I could have chosen a connecting flight that left within an hour of my scheduled landing but those make me nervous. Plus, I knew I would have lounge access so chose the 4 hour layover instead. And it worked out because I just finished a work call I needed to do with my boss that was better not to put off which I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. Dan flew so much last year he earned an upgrade in his status with British Airways that was big enough to include me, allowing me access to the lounge even if I’m not traveling with him. Thanks, honey :) He loves checking out different lounges so I took some photos along the way.

    This was the first lounge I stopped at, very close to the gate where I landed. My flight wasn’t even on the board yet so I asked the woman who checked me in if there was a gate assignment. Yes, A8, and there’s another lounge that’s nicer than this one right above it if you want to head there now, she said. But I didn’t really – wanted to decompress from the bustle of my 3:30am alarm and all that followed. So I used the restroom there – so much nicer than the plane or the ones on the concourse! – and got my fill of coffee since I had very little this morning. The photo above and below were taken from where I was sitting, along the window at a high counter with plenty of plugs. It’s a small lounge – what you see is it.

    They had 3 kinds of fresh berries so I got some of that with some yogurt, and an English muffin after.

    I had a call scheduled for 10am with my boss so was going to take it here, until I realized I’d forgotten about the time change and it would be 11am my time, so after an hour I packed up and went to the other lounge.

    She was right. It’s bigger and nicer. The shot above is taken from the seat where I stationed myself for the duration. Below is what it looked like when it was empty except me – people come and go, there are just 2 others here now. I’m sitting in the right corner next to my carryon which you see below.

     

    It’s 4-5x the size of the other lounge, with a better food selection. I just finished a small cup off artichoke chicken Florentine soup – it was pretty tasty.

    And plenty of amenities for the business traveler, including a copy machine. This was a little room off the side of the entrance. Plugs everywhere which is always the best. Below is similar to the prior lounge, just more of it.

    Still about 2 hours before I board. I completed all the setup for the blog on my laptop which I did while listening to some relaxing music on Pandora. What’s next? Started watching “This is Us” last night for the first time to see what all the hullaballoo is about, but feel asleep before I even finished the first episode. So probably that.

    It’s Noon now (Mountain). Will be back this evening after I settle in.
    ———————-

    It’s now 9:15pm PV time – Central. The flight out of Phoenix was delayed about 45 minutes but otherwise a smooth trip.

    The countryside is beautiful and I enjoyed the views while landing. I love the low clouds in the mountains just right of center. The screen shot below shows the temperature when I landed. And that’s about what the forecast is while I’m here, too: lows in mid-60s’, highs in mid-80’s, and no rain. Kinda perfect.

     

     

    Jon picked me up from the airport and took me by the hotel I’m staying at to check in and drop my stuff off.

     

     

    Hotel522 is a 4 story building in the Centro neighborhood. This area above is the top floor terrace. The terrace in the photo below is just outside my room on 3 and is where breakfast will be served.

     

    The church as seen from the first terrace photo above. I’ll check this out tomorrow.

     

     

     

    Jon stopped at an ATM for me and we went to dinner at he place he’s been going for 20 years. He lived here from 1997-2002, moved back in August of 2015, and visited some in between.  It was cheap, casual, good food. Just what I needed.

     


    The chips and salsa were amazing.

     

     

     

     

     


    There were a few tables behind me towards the entrance but mostly this was the whole place.
    Jon had a chicken dish, above; I had beef enchiladas, below.

    We had a nice visit over dinner. We haven’t seen each other in person since Labor Day when he was in Sacramento, although we’ve Skyped several times since and text in between via Words With Friends. We made plans to get together tomorrow evening. I’m going to make up the day heading into that as I go along.


    The room small but is very functional and just what I need.

    I’m pretty tired. Even though it’s only 7:30pm Pacific time I’m probably going to hit the bed as soon as I take a shower to wash the travel off of me. Been a long day, but I’m excited to be here.

    PS: I did finish the pilot of “This is Us” in the lounge. I’ll admit I’m intrigued….

     

  • Day 5, Dec 27: Long Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula

    Day 5, Dec 27: Long Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula

    Last day of this fun little jaunt over Christmas. Dan flies out of LAX tomorrow morning and I will drive home after dropping him at the airport. It’s been a very relaxing trip and we finished it in a similarly relaxing way – not a lot planned beyond walking through pretty scenery.

    We went down for breakfast at 6am then back up to the room around 7am to finish packing. Dan had to get his prints secure in a box he will check into the plane. We left the hotel around 8am and stopped up the road at Porto’s bakery in Glendale to pick up some items for lunch later.

    We had walked by this Christmas Eve morning and it was a madhouse – completely packed inside and lines down the street. This was much more reasonable. This bakery has a huge selection of savory and sweet things and is clearly very popular. Also very cheap – we picked up 7 things total and it was under $9.

    Above is the whole thing as you walk in, with close-ups of some of the display cases below.

     

     

    From there we headed to Long Beach. It took us over an hour to get 38 miles on 4 different freeways – and that’s making good time in LA! Traffic was moderate, we didn’t have any major slowdowns. We first went to CSU Long Beach to check out a Japanese Tea Garden, but it was closed for winter break and they were doing maintenance. Darn. So we went on to downtown Long Beach to see what there was to see there.

    Long Beach has a population of almost half a million and is the 7th largest city in CA, 36th in the US. It’s primarily industrial and is a huge harbor town, with lots of trucks hauling cargo off of ships. Its downtown area is definitely not a top tourist attraction, but it was worth spending a couple of hours, which is all we did.

    The harbor is pretty, with a little bit of downtown in the background.

     

    Long Beach is a decent place to come if you plan on taking a harbor cruise, a whale watching cruise, or a cruise to Catalina Island, some of which we’d discussed heavily, all of which we ruled out for well thought out reasons when we were planning this trip; ditto the Queen Mary, which you’ll see below. So after a couple of hours we were done, we mostly just wanted to check it out.
     The trip to the lighthouse at the end of the harbor was worth it to get a closer shot of the Queen Mary below.

     

    The Queen Mary has been permanently docked here since 1967. We had a long discussion last month about whether or not we would do this and decided not too for a variety of reasons. But it’s pretty from a distance, too bad there was so much haze (smog!) today.

    From Long Beach we drove through San Pedro, another industrial town, on our way to the Palos Verdes Peninsula where we would spend the rest of the day.

    The Palos Verdes Peninsula is that little part of LA county that juts out into the Pacific Ocean, as indicated in the map above. There are four little towns on it, also indicated above. We weren’t interested in the towns so much as we were in just the drive and the views. And this drive would lead us directly into Torrance, as indicated at the top of the map, where we would be staying at night.

    Our first stop was Wayfarers Chapel. Above is a fountain in front of it as you enter from the parking lot. Below is the view you have of the Pacific just before you enter it.

     

    The Wayfarers Chapel was built in 1951 by Lloyd Wright, son of the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. he conceived it as a tree chapel. It is one of the foremost examples of organic architecture and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. [Don’t know who the kid is, just didn’t feel like waiting for him to move…]

    Emanuel Swedenborg was born in Sweden in 1688. He became a highly regarded scientist in many disciplines. One of his inventions, a small aircraft, hangs in the Smithsonian Institute. In his mid-50’s, his desire for scientific knowledge found a craving for religious understanding. He studied the Bible in its original languages and wrote volumes on numerous portions of it and other subjects of Christian theology. He examined the relationships between body and soul in an attempt to discover the nature of the spiritual being residing within the human personality. After his passing in 1772, a small group of his followers formed a reading group. The first Swedenborgian Church was established in London in 1787. The Swedenborgian Church of North America was established in Baltimore Maryland in 1792. Wayfarers Chapel is sponsored by the Swedenborgian Church.

     

     

     

     The carillon tower, above and below.

    From there we went literally across the street to Abalone Cove Shoreline Park. We brought out our baked goods we got from Porto’s in the morning and had lunch at a picnic table by the ocean. Kinda nice.

     

    Two meat pies, two chicken croquets (not shown – already gone!), an almond croissant, a guava cheese strudel, and an almond sponge cake with chocolate. Not exactly the most balanced lunch but it sure tasted good. To help a little with balance, Dan had an orange and I had a banana which we’d lifted from the breakfast buffet at the hotel the other day but hadn’t eaten yet. So there.

    We went for a beach hike after. This is the beginning of our walk just past where we were sitting. See the area where that tip of land meets the ocean and some rocks in front of it? That’s where we ended up, which you’ll see in the photos below.

     

     These are at the point I referenced in the earlier photo.

     

     

     Dan was playing with the sea life in the tide pools, terrorizing hermit crabs.

     

    Next stop was Point Vicente Lighthouse. Built in 1926, it is still a functioning lighthouse operated by the US Coast Guard. It is closed to the public except for tours provided one Saturday a month. The closest I could get was through a fence, which was how I got the shot below. 

     

    There is also a little whale watching center there, with some exhibits on local marine life. You can borrow binoculars, which you can see in the photo below some have. There were 4 whale sightings today at the time I took the photo about 2pm. There are roughly 3200 whale sightings a year in this area.

     

    We’d walked along the bluffs for awhile then decided we were done and it was time to check into the hotel. One last shot of the lighthouse as we left.
    We made it to the hotel about 3pm probably. We are staying at the Doubletree in Torrance where we stayed the last 5 nights of December, 2016. Well, I stayed 5 nights anyway; Dan flew out that last night and I drove home the next day, which was New Year’s Day 2017. So we’re ending this year in a very similar way. We are even returning to the same Japanese restaurant we had dinner at last New Year’s Eve for dinner tonight. It’s about 5:30pm now so we should be leaving for that in a little while.

    ——————–
    It’s now approaching 8:30pm, we are back from dinner. It was as good as we remembered it from last year. It’s called Irifune, and is a funny little shopping center with even odder parking. Luckily, just about 2 miles from the hotel.

     

    The meal started with a simple salad, and this little egg dish that Dan really enjoyed last year, and it was just as good tonight. It’s a warm egg custard soup sort of thing, and will leave it at that. Tasty and comforting.

     We shared a roll with yellow tail (Hamachi).

    Dan had the black cod, above; I got teriyaki chicken and tempura, below. Side dishes were slightly different but nothing worth going into a lot of detail over :) But it was an excellent meal all around.

     

    And that’s it for us this round. Dan will be coming to San Diego later in January for a conference and will head up to Sacramento for a long weekend after that, much as he’s been doing all year. He made it to Sac about once a month in 2017. It’s hard to make plans past that given the limbo of his work. My boss has offered to let me experiment with working from Raleigh a week a month to see how that goes, so we may look for a time to play with that in first quarter. We will return to Europe sometime this summer we hope, just can’t plan anything just yet. I’m thinking something Alps like – maybe Zurich, Munich, Salzburg. Would provide some great hiking! We’ll see. Regardless of where we end up, we’ll be back here. Thanks for coming along and Happy New Year!

     

  • Day 4, Dec 26: Warner Bros. Studios; Pasadena, Part 2

    Day 4, Dec 26: Warner Bros. Studios; Pasadena, Part 2

    Breakfast in the hotel returned to its 6am weekday schedule on Tuesday so we went down when it opened. After we relaxed in front of the fire in the open area outside of the restaurant. Vacation, right? It’s allowed.

    The big activity of the day was Warner Bros. Studios. This was definitely one of my things. I‘d looked at all of the studios that had tours and this seemed to be the one that was most focused on behind the scenes stuff, as opposed to say Universal which is an amusement park, and that’s what I was most interested in.

     

     

     

    We got there a little after 9am. It took a bit to get processed through the ticket area. There was a short video first, with Ellen DeGeneres as host, quickly reviewing Warner’s 100 years of movie making and TV history. The audience was then split into different tour groups and you went out into the tour carts with your guide. The first thing you see as you enter the backlot is the iconic water tower above. Monix, below, was our guide for the morning.

    She wasn’t the best guide we’ve had on things like this but definitely not the worst and she took a liking to us, maybe because we were the only ones really asking any questions, and we sat up in the front row of the cart with her. This was on Hennessy Street, named in honor of an Oscar winning set designer, which has been used countless times in movies and TV for exterior shots. The street you’re looking at has been used for movies as diverse as Annie and Minority Report. With another tour group who joined us briefly, we watched a video clip inside one of the sets of how many different times you will see the X in the fire escape below, although the only one we could remember this morning was The Last Samurai. She told us later the story of filming Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst filming his upside down kiss seen in fake rain on this fire escape in Spider-Man.

     

    A street on Anytown USA, used for things like East of Eden and The Waltons and a list of other things she rattled off I can’t remember now. The house above was the Sievers residence in Growing Pains. There was the Midwest neighborhood, and there was another that was the city neighborhood, that had a brownstone street as well as a courthouse, cafes, etc, used for everything from Gotham City to Gilmore Girls. Most of this stuff is facades used for exterior shots, and interior sets are all in the studio. Only a few of these were “practical sets” where you could also film inside.

    There was a Harry Potter exhibit that I enjoyed. Marauder’s Map above, Dobby below. I’d just re-watched all 7 movies again a month or so ago; Dobby’s death still gets me every time!

     

     

    Me under the Sorting Hat. Ravenclaw. Boring. Was secretly hoping for Slytherin.
    The golden egg and Tri Wizard Cup from Goblet of Fire, and the Golden Snitch.

     

    The fireplace from the first movie with the envelopes streaming in.
    Brownstone street.

     

    A sound stage, with a “best of” list of the things filmed here, currently home of The Big Bang Theory. Some examples since it’s hard to read: Dark Victory and Now, Voyager for other Bette Davis fans. Giant, Blade Runner, and several Batman movies. We did go in and saw the BBT stage and got a little info on how all that works with a studio audience, sitting where they do, but weren’t allowed to take photos.

    This little stretch of land doubles as Central Park and any other park you’ve probably seen on TV. I will admit I was disturbed to learn that Friends never left this lot, including the entirety of the exterior shots in this little scene which were filmed right in this spot.

    A war memorial of Warner employees and actors who served in the military, including names like Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Stewart.

    There was also a Batman exhibit that had every bat-mobile type vehicle ever used in film or TV, all of which are fully operable and licensed to be driven on the street.
    Coffee, anyone? The last section we went through had some of the Friends set as well as a lots of other costumes and paraphernalia from many other shows and movies.

     

    This was a technique called forced perspective, where the set is designed to create 3-D imaging, especially depth,  that the camera can’t see as easily as the human eye. This is an example of how they made Hobbits so short, as an example.

    Dan holding an Academy Award. He said it was really heavy!
    Crucifix from the Exorcist.

     

    CJ Cregg’s fishbowl and the “Bartlett for America” napkin from The West Wing.

    We were at Warner Bros in total about 2.5 hours. Since we were already in Burbank, we went back to the downtown area we’d been in the day before, it was literally just up the street from where we were parked. In our quest to eat as much Asian food as we can, we went to a Thai food place this time. It was just OK, too Americanized and sweet for Dan’s taste for sure.

    Dan got the green curry, above, I had cashew chicken.

     

    A cute little place though.

     

    We went back to the hotel to change into shorts. Next on the list was some hiking, an almost 3 mile round trip trail on the north edge of Pasadena called Eaton Canyon.

    We were surprised to see a decent-sized and almost-full parking lot on a random Tuesday afternoon, so weren’t surprised to keep seeing a fair number of people on the trail with us.
    This was a stream bed at some point.

     

     

    A little falls at the end of the trail. It was a nice walk, took us about an hour.

     

    Most of you know Dan’s love of architecture, and Arts and Crafts homes are some of his favorite. Pasadena is known for having a great collection of these houses, and even have an entire neighborhood of them listed in the National Register of Historic Places and considered one of the “10 great places in America.” This is Bungalow Heaven, and most of these houses were built between 1900-1920. Just a sampling below.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Before the hike, we’d stopped by the book/antique shop we were at on Sunday and Dan struck a deal with the owner for the prints he wanted. We went back after this to pick them up, and stopped at a box store a block away to get packing materials. After that we went down Colorado Blvd again, where we seem to have spent much of our time this trip, or at least crossed it a bunch, to a dim sum place that had decent ratings on Yelp. We were pleased to see lots of Asians in it, always a good sign. We’ve typically done dim sum for brunch, so having it for dinner was a nice change.

    Definitely better than what we can get in Sacramento (and nowhere to be found in Raleigh), the food here was on par with the quality of Bay Area Chinese food. This was an “order off the menu” place, not “pick from the cart” which we like better. Everything was fresh, hot, and paced well. We ordered 7 things and everything came out one at a time, taking over and hour for dinner. It was very relaxing and gave you time to really enjoy it and not feel rushed.

     

    We ordered mostly things we get in Sac when we do this, to be able to easily compare, and right from the start it was bigger and better, much higher quality of ingredients and interesting techniques. This is a fried sticky rice ball with meat inside as seen below. The outside was really crispy and the mixture inside had a great flavor. Home run right off the bat.

     

    A simple green bean and minced pork dish that had incredible flavor, it was actually one of my favorites. The green beans were very fresh and perfectly cooked.
    Typically my favorite in dim sum, shumai, and this was excellent. Dan is typically “whatever” about shumai but he really liked this version.

     

    We ordered this for me – a scallop dumpling because I love scallops – but this had a surprise shrimp in it and I could hardly taste the scallop. Dan really liked it though.
    Pork spareribs in a very light black bean sauce. This was one of Dan’s favorites, the quality of the meat was excellent and it was cooked well.

     

    This is a sticky rice dish with meat inside steamed in a lotus leaf. It tasted just like it was supposed to and was very filling.

    This was the most amazing bite of the night. A fried carrot ball off of the dessert menu, we ordered it because we had no idea what it was but it sounded interesting. Similar to the item we started with, it was served warm and the outside was nice and crispy. The inside was a sticky carrot something with a custard in the very middle.

     

    Extremely rich, very satisfying.

     

    We’d parked right by Pasadena City Hall so got a shot of it at night as we headed back to the hotel.
    Below are the prints Dan bought, which will go in the living room of his condo in Raleigh. They are very him and turned out great.

     

     

     

    Writing this Wednesday morning, this is our last breakfast in this hotel in Glendale. Since we knew we were spending the day in the south area, it didn’t make sense to come all the way back here, only to go south again in the morning to take Dan to LAX. So we’re staying in Torrance tonight, at the same Hilton we were at around New Year’s last year.

     

  • Day 3, Dec 25: LA Neighborhoods

    Day 3, Dec 25: LA Neighborhoods

    We had a light schedule on Christmas Day, which we knew we would and were looking forward to a relaxing day. We took our time with breakfast in the morning and didn’t leave the hotel until about 10:30am. We went to Burbank to see “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” We’re both pretty big SW fans and were amused at the outrage we were hearing about this movie. There was even a short-lived petition to get it removed from the canon on Star Wars films. I’d read so much about how SW had lost it’s way with this film, I was sort of disappointed Luke didn’t turn to the dark side and kill Leia. That’s kinda what I was suspecting after some of the stuff I’d read. So, sorry if this is a spoiler, but nothing even close to that happened. And we enjoyed the movie, in fact Dan thinks it might now be his favorite, surpassing Rogue One which became his favorite after that came out. And for him, he likes them because they’re so different from the other movies. The Force Awakens is one of his least favorite because it was so much like IV, where I enjoyed a lot as sort of an homage.

    Enough about all that. For the rest of the day, we just went neighborhood hopping, starting with Burbank where we had lunch. The movie was in the big mall there, Town Center, and downtown butts right up against it. It’s pretty and quaint but doesn’t photograph all that well, I just grabbed a couple below so I would remember it’s what we did next.

    The alley behind the Christmas Tree below serves as an entrance to the mall, which is huge. We found a pho place for lunch and it was good (forgot photos). There were actually quite a few people milling about and many of the restaurants were open, including Starbucks which was packed. We were a little surprised at that.

     

     

    From there we went by Dan’s elementary school, which is on N New Hampshire off of Hollywood Blvd. right after it begins from Vermont Ave a block east. Across Hollywood Blvd is Barnsdall Park, someplace Dan had never been despite having lived right by it for years. We took the shot of the school below from there. It’s essentially a hill with some decent views of the city, and there’s a theater up there as well.

     

    You can see the Hollywood sign in the hills on the left, and Griffith Observatory on the right.
    The top of the hill.

    Next we went to Olvera Street, a Mexican outdoor market downtown that’s considered to be the birthplace of Los Angeles. It was the first street established in 1781. We were really surprised how many people were out and about here. It was lively and colorful for sure.

     

     

    This is Avila Adobe, the oldest existing house in Los Angeles, built about 1818. Had we gotten there 15 minutes earlier we could have gone in; it’s free, but closed at 4pm.

     

     

    I’d been keeping my eye out for bougainvillea the whole trip and finally found some! It’s my favorite flower, but it’s too cold in Sacramento for it to do well. This was a nice display of it on the roof behind the tree.

     

    As we worked our way out of the market and over to Union Square, we got a nice shot of City Hall as a the sun was setting.

     

    A tribute to a Mexican-American singer/actor named Antonio Aguilar, who was 88 when he died in 2007. He recorded 160 albums and made over 100 movies.

     

    Built in 1939, Los Angeles Union Station is the largest railroad passenger terminal in the Western US and widely regarded as “the last of the great train stations.”

     

     

    The outside courtyard – a Christmas tree framed by palm trees. Where else but LA?

    From there we drove less than 1/2 mile and parked again over in Chinatown and walked around a bit. There were even more people out, and just about all the restaurants were open and packed, where several had lots of waiting folks hanging out on the sidewalk. Chinese are primarily Buddhist so you can generally rely on Chinese restaurants being open on Christmas! We know families who’ve made their own traditions based on that reliance.

     

    Suits him, don’tchyathink?

     

    From there we headed to Koreatown, and drove through downtown. This was our 3rd time driving through downtown on this trip and I decided to see if I could grab a few shots. It is really pretty all lit up, and I can’t recall another downtown we’ve been in where a freeway runs right through it with tall buildings so close on either side.

     

     

    Koreatown was also packed, as always, and after a bit of driving around we found a place to park, and decided on Korean BBQ, always a favorite of mine. Dan was hoping to find soondae (Korean blood sausage) but the place we went last year – him twice – wasn’t open.

     

    They brought a nice little salad first, then the flood of side dishes, which Dan liked better than the grouping we had Saturday night. Korean food is all about the side dishes. Top row from left to right in the photo below: cucumber kimchi (my favorite), a sort of green onion kimchee, a potato salad that also had persimmon in it, kabocha – think acorn squash, which was my 2nd favorite, fish cake, and a noodle dish. In the back were two kinds of wraps, one flour, one pickled radish, which was Dan’s favorite.

    The bottom four were seaweed, cilantro, another herb or sprout we couldn’t identify, and bean sprouts.

     

    We had pork belly, which is how bacon starts out before it’s cured. Hard to go wrong with that.

     

    This was spicy pork, also very good.

     

    That’s it for Christmas Day. It was a nice relaxing day and we enjoyed seeing so many people out and about enjoying the different neighborhoods.

  • Day 2, Dec 24: Pasadena & Glendale

    Day 2, Dec 24: Pasadena & Glendale

    This was Sunday, for those of us (namely me) having trouble keeping track of what day it is. We had breakfast in the hotel and got an early start, leaving before 8:30. The plan was to go to the theater we would be going to today and buy the tickets a day early. It’s one of those “reserved seating” theaters and we didn’t want to wait too much longer in case things were selling out. Turns out the prices were more than we were willing to pay – $16.75 and no matinee prices. That just seemed ridiculous. When did going to the movies get so expensive? Or are these just LA prices? We found much cheaper prices online – less than half that – at a theater in Burbank and still reserved seating – so got those instead.

    But the theaters were in a shopping center called Americana at Brand, and we liked the look of it. It was completed in 2008, so Dan hadn’t seen it before, and we decided to come back at night, so more on this later. It’s about a mile away from the hotel and we walked, so got 2 miles in before we even really began our day. We ended up walking almost 11 miles today.

    We drove over to Pasadena and didn’t have much planned here, just a walking tour in the morning and the Norton Simon in the afternoon since we skipped that yesterday. One of the first things you’re reminded of as you get into central Pasadena is that it is the home of the famous Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s day, and they were already in full prep mode for that. The signs on the lamppost as seen above map out the parade route, which is 5.5 miles and most of that up Colorado Blvd, which is also Route 66. In addition to the marked lampposts, you also see bleachers set up in nooks and crannies between building as shown below.

    We went first towards City Hall and ran across these guys in the parking lot.

     

    Meet Mack and Jackie Robinson, brothers from Pasadena. Mack won a silver medal for the 200 meter dash in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Jackie, a name you probably recognize, was the first African-American major league baseball player. That’s Mack on the right, eternally facing City Hall, as he stayed in Pasadena his whole life. Jackie is on the left looking east towards Brooklyn where he lived as an adult.

    And this is City Hall. Completed in 1927 for just 1.3 million at the time, it is a significant example of what’s referred to as the City Beautiful Movement in architecture, which inspired architects in the early part of the last century to create public buildings that reflected grandeur. If you are a Parks and Recreation fan, it’s also the exterior of Pawnee City Hall.

     

     

     Above and below taken from the interior courtyard.

     

     The entrance from the back side. Or is it the front? Not sure it matters.

     

    We walked around town a bit just looking at the shops and restaurants and things to do. Eventually we worked our way out of the central district and adjacent to it is Caltech, or California Institute of Technology, the west coast version of MIT. Dan applied here back in the day but was waitlisted, although he said he would have gone to Penn even if he had been accepted here. But it’s a good school, considered one of the premier science colleges in the world. It ranks 13th in the production of Nobel Laureates, but because it’s small it’s probably #1 from a per capita perspective. A 2015 Pomona College Study ranked in #1 in the percentage of graduates who go on to earn PhDs. The next few photos are of the campus. There were a fair number of people walking around, using it as a park.

     

     

    We spent a decent amount of time after this walking through some residential areas. It felt creepy somehow to take photos of people’s houses so we got nothing to show for it. But it was pretty :) Lots of big houses from the 20’s with big lawns, wide fronts, and semi-circular driveways.

    We worked our way to a fast food joint called Yoshinoya, which was called Beef Bowl when Dan lived here and was a place he frequented. For Sacramento types, think I Love Teriyaki – same set up.

    Above: Dan had to get what he always got back in the day, their traditional beef and teriyaki chicken. Below: I got angus steak with honey walnut shrimp. I liked both of mine better than his. And I Love Teriyaki is better :) But you know how that is – you have to revisit haunts and it was worth the stop – a cheap and satisfying lunch.

     

    We stopped an at a used book store that also had an antique art collection and Dan talked with the owner quite a bit. He thought about getting some prints he found that he liked, and we even went back later in the day to see if he could haggle the guy down to what he would be willing to pay, but he was gone for the day. So perhaps we will come back sometime this week.

     This is the entrance to the Norton Simon museum, with a front yard filled with Rodin sculptures. Dan couldn’t resist.

     

    The first two galleries, which covered 14th-18th century art, didn’t have a lot that interested us. The one above caught my attention only because it was a self portrait. Her name is Marie-Genevieve Bouliar, and she painted this in 1792. It’s pretty rare to see a female artist anytime before the 21st century.

     The 19th century gallery was our favorite, with a nice collection of some well known artists, including Renior above, and Monet below.

     

     I’m not always a Van Gogh fan, but I liked these next three. Above is a portrait of his mother from 1888. Below is Portrait of a Peasant from the same year.

     

    Van Gogh did this in 1889 when he was a self-admitted patient at Saint-Remy-de-Provence after a series of nervous breakdowns. While it’s hard to see in this photo, the brush strokes are very thick, adding quite a bit of texture to the paining, almost like a bas-relief sculpture. It’s one of Van Gogh’s favorites.

     Picasso, Woman with a Book.

     

    In the back was a nice sculpture garden with a little coffee shop and places to sit.

     

    This was may favorite piece in the garden. The placement of it was thoughtful, with the color of the ice plant ground cover and the blue cedar in the background worked with the statue to create this interesting sea of blue-green. It worked. Below is the same artist, Aristide Maillol.

     

     The gardens themselves were interesting, too. Dan thought this looked alien.

     

     The downstairs gallery was all Asian art. This is a temple wall with scenes from Krishna’s life, 19th century India.

     

    Siddhartha (Buddha) Meditating below the Jambu Tree. From 3rd century Pakistan. There were an interesting number of pieces from Pakistan from the 100s-300s. I don’t remember seeing a lot from Pakistan in our travels so this stood out to me for some reason.

     Stele with Vishnu and other Hindu Deities, 12th century India. I love seeing old things with this much detail, always makes me appreciate the time and talent it took to do this stuff by hand.

     

     This view of the garden taken from the inside, the entire wall was glass.

     

    We went back to our room and rested for a bit before heading out again for dinner. We walked to a restaurant in downtown Glendale called Carousel, which served Middle Eastern food. It was a fixed price set menu so there was nothing to order, you just sat down and they starting bringing things out.

    First course was mezza or small dishes, we thought of it as cold appetizers – various things to eat with the pita bread. Pretty typical fair for Middle Eastern cuisine: tabbouleh, a chili paste which was one of my favorite from this round, hummus, baba ganoush, dolmas, a coleslaw that had too much dill in it for my taste but Dan liked it. Of course olives and carrots, etc., and a dish we had to ask what it was but we really liked it – turned out it was cracked wheat.

    The warm appetizers included some sausage in the dish at the top of the photo which I liked more than Dan did. The larger plate had beef balls, fried chickpea, a salad, and what I thought was the best bite of the night, something they called cheese pie, the pastry item. Three kinds of cheese fried in a sort of crispy filo dough. I could’ve eaten a plate of that.

     The main course was two different kinds of rice and a meat platter with chicken, lamb and beef.

     

    We were out of there in a just a little over and hour and wanted to walk off some of that food, so headed back to the Americana Brand. It’s definitely our kind of place, a mix of retail, restaurants and residential, something you don’t see a lot of in Southern California especially, but we really enjoyed it. The shops were mostly closed at this time, but the restaurants were open. And it was decorated nicely for Christmas and there were lots of people about taking photos. We joined them.

    A dancing fountain was the highlight of the central area.
     The little house where Santa lived and during the day kids would line up for photos. He was out working that night. (Christmas Eve)

     

     The other side of the dancing fountain which looped around a sculpture.
     And a nice big tree that looked much better at night than it did during the day. But isn’t that always the case? Below are the exposed elevators that take residents up to their units.
    And that was our day. We walked through the Glendale Galleria on our way out – which was mostly closed at this time, approaching 8pm, but you could still walk through the 2 block 3 story mall – and ended up helping a lost couple find their way to the movie theaters. Our good deed for the day I guess.
    Merry Christmas, everyone!

     

  • Day 1, Dec 23: Huntington Library

    Day 1, Dec 23: Huntington Library

    Day 1 of vacation. I’m so happy to be off I can’t seem to remember what day it is. I kept thinking it was Friday; Dan kept thinking it was Sunday. Oh well. (It’s a Saturday, by the way.) As long as we know when to check out I guess that’s all that matters.

    We went down for breakfast when it opened at 7am, and I was happy to see it was more normal seating than my dining experience the night before, as shown below. We got a nice little table in the corner. Food was typical breakfast fare, nothing special. But free and satisfying, so that definitely counts.

    We left the hotel about 9:20. We stopped first at a CVS to get me some cough syrup and cough drops, a lingering symptom from being pretty sick a couple of weeks ago. Then a quick stop at an Enterprise Rental to get Dan added as a driver, because that could only be done in person.

    Last year when we were here we’d spent some time in the Los Feliz area around the two different places his family had lived for the first few years after moving here from Korea in 1978 and Dan was 9. When he was a sophomore in high school, they moved to Glendale, so we stopped by that apartment next which was just a few blocks from Enterprise. It’s always fun and interesting to return to old stomping grounds.

    Pasadena is just about 8 miles east of Glendale, we moved in that direction next. The big stop of the day is the Huntington Library, technically in San Marino just south of Pasadena. Henry Edwards Huntington was a railroad magnate, largely responsible for building the railroad system in Southern California, and who was also an extensive collector of books, art, and botanical items. His wife, Arabella, was an art collector and expert in her own right, and advised him about art collecting before they we married. The bought a 1700 acre ranch in San Marino. After their deaths, that estate and its holding became the foundation for the Huntington Library which, in addition to being a museum attraction for the public, is still used by up to 2000 scholars each year as a research facility because of it’s rare collection of books especially.

    It’s not much to look at as you first approach, above. Tickets were pricey as these things go, $29 each. We kept commenting on that as we toured; the maintenance on this place must be pretty costly. We originally were only going to stay here until lunch, then leave for lunch and go to the Norton Simon museum in Pasadena in the afternoon. There was so much to do here we decided to get our money’s worth, eat lunch here, and not rush to check everything out. We never made it to the other museum.

    The initial part of the complex is the research and education center, a collection of buildings (which we skipped) around a long courtyard. This garden is at the end of it. The Library exhibits are to the right of this and that’s where we headed first. We were both surprised by what we found here. A few times we were like “shouldn’t this be somewhere else?”

    This is an original publication, from 1623, of what’s referred to as Shakespeare’s “first folio”, the first publication of  “authoritative versions of thirty-six of his works that form the basis for all later editions. Half of them, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth night, As You Like It, and The Tempest, did not appear previously in print. Without this edition, many of his plays might not have survived.”

    Above: an original Huckleberry Finn, from 1889. Below: Jack London’s original manuscript from The Call of the Wild.

     

    A fountain as seen from one of library windows.

     

    An original print of The Birds of America, John James Audubon’s (think Audubon Society) first attempt in the early part of the 1800’s to identify all 435 species then known in the United States. I asked Dan to stand in front of the display for scale, but I’m still not sure it captured how big this book is.

    This didn’t photograph well, but is an original manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales from the early 1400’s.

    At least our 3rd “we can’t believe this is here,” a Guttenberg bible. I’d seen one on my very first trip to Europe in March of 2013. Dan was in Mainz, Germany, at a conference for work and I met him there, so my first day of exploration was in Mainz, a city many if not most have never heard of. But it is where Guttenberg lived and where he invented the printing press, choosing the bible as his first product in 1455. He only printed 175 of these total, and there are only 48 of them left in the world. And now I’ve seen two of them.

    The European art collection is housed in the mansion the Huntington’s used to live in. We enjoy museums like this – and we’ve lost count of how many mansions/palaces we’ve been in that have been turned into museums – because even if you don’t care for the art, the building itself is worth seeing.

    Many of these rooms are still as they furnished them when they lived here from their extensive personal collections. I think the room above was called the parlor, and the room below obviously the dining room. Each room had a touch display that gave you as much detail as you wanted about every piece in it, whether it was art on the wall, the items on the mantel, or the furniture. Arabella loved French furniture and the house is full of it.

     

    Huntington’s European art collection was primarily British, an aspect we were intrigued by because we’d never seen such a large collection of British art before, not even when we were in London. European museums seem to have a huge focus on French, Dutch, and Italian art, but you don’t see much British, at least we haven’t. But we did today, and I was super thrilled to discover this. I literally gasped when I saw it. If any of my siblings are reading this, they will instantly recognize this – the Blue Boy – because we had a print of it hanging in the house we grew up in. I haven’t thought of it in years and will admit it never occurred to me to wonder about the original. But here it is, painted in 1770 by Thomas Gainsborough. I couldn’t get a decent shot of this without the glare from the light above, but it’s pretty stunning in person and close up. It’s considered a masterpiece because of the way he was able to show the satin, the many textures of the color blue, and the gold trim around the tunic is like glitter. It’s been very well maintained and looks terrific. The sale of it to the Huntington’s in 1921 at $700,000 set a record for the time as the most expensive art transaction in history. 

    I don’t remember anything about this just thought it was pretty.

     

    Dan was looking at this piece when I came up behind him and said ‘hey, that looks like Salisbury Cathedral.” And that’s because it is. We were there last summer, and get a kick out of seeing places we’ve been in paintings in museums. Sort of the opposite happened the first time we walked into St. Mark’s Square in Venice in 2016 – we’d seen it so many times in museum paintings we felt like wee were walking into a painting when we finally came across it in real life. We decided today after seeing some more that Venice in general is the place we’ve seen the most paintings of in museums.

     

    Above: the beginnings of the most extensive rose garden we’ve ever come across, continued in the two photos below.

     

     

    From there we went to the Japanese gardens, which were huge and breathtaking. This was when are discussion of costly maintenance really kicked in.

     

     

     

    Dry Landscape Garden

     

    The first of two significant bonsai collections. Bonsai are beautiful but ridiculously high maintenance.
    This was the 2nd bonsai collection up the hill from the first, in an enclosed garden with a water feature in the middle. I liked this one much better. The display below was in the corner to my left.

    We came across a little stream that had a great sound which I tried to capture here. Probably not the best quality but you’ll get the idea. It’s pretty though!

    A Japanese tea room.

    A little bamboo tunnel on our way to the Chinese gardens, below, where we ultimately stopped for lunch.

     

    There was a little Chinese place by the gardens and we sat in a structure that was mostly windows. The food wasn’t bad – usually a 50/50 chance at museums. Dan had the congee (top bowl) and I had a beef noodle dish.

     

    After lunch we went to the Boone Gallery, which housed temporary exhibits. Photos weren’t allowed, but the topic was indigenous American art from the 1400s to early 1800’s. It was actually pretty interesting.

    We went to the American Gallery next. The painting above is by Guy Rose, an American Impressionist from San Gabriel, California. He lived in Paris for awhile and Claude Monet was his mentor. It shows.

    Above and below: they had a decent collection of Favrile Glass, a type of iridescent art glass developed by Louis Tiffany. From the late 1800’s.

     

    Dan liked this piece, The Locomotive by Reginald Marsh, 1935. He was commissioned to paint murals for the post office building in Washington DC and wanted to do them fresco, which is a style that paints directly onto wet plaster. He used this painting to practice and master the process. This was lifted from his studio wall, and is unique in that it shows different textures based on the smoothness, or not, of the plaster he was painting on. The variations in surface texture create a sense of atmosphere and depth.

    Quilts are particular to American art and there’s generally a decent collection of them in galleries which focus on such. This was no exception.
    By Gilbert Stuart, 1797. Look familiar? This painting of George Washington served as the basis for the engraving used on the one dollar bill.
    Council of War, by John Rogers, 1868. Lincoln with General Ulysses Grant (cleaning his glasses) and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton as they discuss Civil War plans.
    On our way to the botanical gardens, in the conservatory building in the rear of this photo. But the point of it is Dan in front mimicking the statue in the middle of the garden :)
    We left around 3:30 I guess, having spent about  5.5 hours there. That’s quite a stop for one place even for us, but it went by pretty fast and we enjoyed it, and definitely felt like we got our money’s worth! We went back to our room and relaxed until we had to go out again to meet Dan’s family for dinner in Koreatown. I only took one photo below, which included all of the side dishes, which Dan claims is the best part of Korean food anyway. The dish to the left is Korean BBQ beef which was excellent.

     

    I asked about taking a group photo but no one was in the mood. Oh well. We went back to our room and I for one was in bed by 9:15. I had managed to get the photos uploaded for this before dinner yesterday, and started to write last night but just couldn’t do it. Decided that would work much better after a good night’s sleep, which I got, and some coffee, which I’ve had. Ready for another day.

  • Catch-up & Departure

    For some reason I am always a little ambivalent about blogging for these more local trips. I think maybe it’s because they’re shorter, and/or I think people won’t be interested, and/or I get in a lazy mood and don’t want the work. It is vacation after all, right?

    And then I remember a little jaunt to Richmond, VA, Memorial Day Weekend of 2016, which I chose not to blog and have regretted it ever since. Because in the end, I enjoy having the memento. It’s really the only thing we take with us from our travels. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but in all of the places we’ve gone, we’ve never bought anything: not a t-shirt, magnet, piece of art, or chochtke of any kind. THIS is our souvenir. This is what we bring back.

    So here we are. A little catch-up on us is in order I guess, although there isn’t really that much to report since our last trip to Europe which ended July 8. If you’ve been following for awhile, you know Dan and I are living apart – me in Sacramento, him in Raleigh, NC – while we wait out this limbo of his job status with Bayer while they make progress on their acquisition of Monsanto. So while we have news, there’s no real status change: the limbo will continue for awhile. And the news is that when the deal is final, and that date keeps getting pushed out, currently late first quarter 2018, Dan will be one of 1800 Bayer employees who will be divested to another German company called BASF. If you’re interested in that kind of business news, you can read more about it here.

    The limbo part is two-fold. One, if somehow the Bayer-Monsanto deal collapses, which is unlikely at this point, then the divestiture doesn’t happen. If it all goes as planned, then Dan and his team will become BASF employees and that’s then essentially like starting a new job. Because BASF is buying the whole shop, there’s no need to move at the moment – everyone, at least in Dan’s immediate world, stays where they are and the signs on the buildings change. But we don’t yet know how it will impact Dan’s day-to-day: who he’ll report to, whether he’ll like it, how much if any he still needs to travel to Europe for business, etc. So while we’re waiting for all that to settle, it still doesn’t quite make sense for us to get me to Raleigh, because we don’t know how long all that will take. And there’s a whole bunch going on in my job right now that would make it less than ideal for them to have to take on a search for a new HR Director, and I’m interested in seeing some changes I’m driving there through to the end. So we wait some more.

    When we first started talking about traveling for Christmas way back when, this trip was originally this cool concept of Madrid-Lisbon-Marrakesh. But we wanted that to be a longer trip and there was too much unknown in Dan’s job to be able to plan that when we would have needed to. So then it was a Grand Canyon-Sedona excursion. Both of these trips we will still do at some point. But we ended up in LA for a couple of reasons. One, way back in 2012 before we started blogging, we had a 2 week trip planned in LA in December of that year that we had to cut short 2 days into it because of an emergency at Dan’s work. Starting with our trip here last year heading into New Year’s, we’ve been working our way through the list of things we’d planned to do then but never did. This is a continuation of that. Plus Dan’s family is here and it gives us a good excuse to see them a bit.

    Friday, 12/22, was our departure day. I drove (rented a car this time for a variety of reasons) and got to the room about 5pm. There was plenty of traffic all the way down, lots of holiday travelers, but I made satisfying time. I only stopped once in Kettleman City (because you kind of “have to” stop in KC in my opinion on that trip) to get gas, use the restroom and get a quick bite to eat. I was on the Grapevine around 4pm and hit some rush hour traffic after that. We are staying at a Hilton in Glendale, which is north of LA proper.

    We have a nice room! I took these just as I arrived so I could grab them before the sun set completely.

    This is sort of from the doorway as you walk in. Bathroom to the right out of view, the desk area, pictured below, is to the left of where I’m standing in the above photo.

     

    Downtown LA in the distance, that’s looking south. And caught a bit of a nice sunset over the mountains to the west, below.

    I unpacked, went to the gym to get some cardio in and stretch the legs after 5.5 hours of driving. Showered after and just went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner because I did not feel like getting in the car again. The restaurant seating is bizarre – more just like a bar/lounge area. Will be interesting to see if it’s the same for breakfast. There weren’t any traditional tables or booths, just counters and couches and some of the high bar tables. But the food was decent, a pork sausage pasta dish above with a simple garlic sauce and some broccoli.

    Dan worked most of the day and had a direct flight to LAX which landed him here just after 9:30. I left about 8:45 to go get him. Apparently everyone and their mother flew into LAX Friday night because traffic was a joke, with a 27 minute delay for just the mile getting into the airport on the freeway. I ended up getting off the freeway one exit early and the google reroute ended up being faster if not more direct shot (very circuitous) shot, but at least I didn’t have to sit in the parking lot that was the freeway. And lots of people must’ve taken that because there was no other good reason for me to be following as many cars as I was going through the bowels and back alleys of LAX. It was kind of bizarre.

    We have a nice little stay planned, starting with hanging out in the Glendale/Pasadena area this weekend. We have dinner with this family tonight in Koreatown. Monday, Christmas Day, will be movie day (Jedi & Churchill). Tuesday is Warner Brothers Studios, and Wednesday we head south the explore the Long Beach area. Dan flies out Thursday morning and I’ll drive home that day, still giving us both nice 4 day weekends to wind down the year. I haven’t taken this particular week off (“the week in between”) in over 10 years and am super-excited about it.
    [PS: Weird things going on with the font, I know. Working on it…]

     

  • Day 13, Jul 8: NYC, Part 2 – Brooklyn; + Final Thoughts

    Day 13, Jul 8: NYC, Part 2 – Brooklyn; + Final Thoughts

    We packed it in until the end. We had a 10am Walking Tour scheduled – with the same guy who did the one Friday we discovered – and left the room after breakfast around 8:30 to walk around some before we had to meet him. The rendezvous point was the same fountain in City Hall Park we were at yesterday so we knew it was just a few minutes around the corner from the hotel.

     

     This was probably just before 7am. The sun’s reflection off the buildings was so bright we had to close the curtains.
    Our first stop on our early walk was Trinity Church. (“National Treasure” anyone?) On Broadway where Wall Street begins, Jon Scott and I had stopped by this in 2011 but never went inside. This church has been around since 1696. The first Trinity Church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1776 from the Revolutionary War. A second church was completed in 1789, which later had serious structural problems and had to be rebuilt. This version has been here since 1846. With a 281-foot high steeple, it was the tallest building in NYC until 1890.
     “On this spot stood Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her gracious visit, July 9, 1976.” It’s Episcopal, which is American for Anglican or Church of England. Hence the visit by the Queen.

     

     

     Side chapel above; organ in the choir below.

     

     A WWII Memorial in Battery Park.

    Clinton Castle, originally a fort to help defend the US during the war of 1812. Currently serves as the ticket office for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

     Above and below: Looking back at downtown from Battery Park.

     

    We stopped by Oculus to add the fare to our Metro cards that we would need for the airport so we wouldn’t have to mess with it later, and met the Walking Tour right at 10am. Yesterday we kept joking about how we’d been in City Hall Park several times, somehow never actually saw City Hall. Today we finally did. It’s the oldest in the US, completed in 1812. It has a very classic design that we’ve seen in Liberty Hall in Philadelphia, as well as lots of buildings in Europe.

    The tour we picked was to cover the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Heights, and DUMBO, or Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, an area popular with artists and high tech company’s along the river between the two bridges. We ended up bailing on the tour early, just as he was headed in to Dumbo, because we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get to the airport. But we liked what we saw. Neither of us had been to Brooklyn before and while we only saw a tiny part of it, we enjoyed it. And of course had never walked the bridge, so that was fun for sure.



     

    The Brooklyn Bridge was started in 1869 and not finished until 1883. The year at the top of this first tower is 1875, when it was finished. Can’t really see it in these photos but it’s there :) Pedestrians and bicycles go in the center, and cars on either side.

     

     This was Dante, the tour guide we had both yesterday and today. The umbrella was essentially his flag so we could keep track of him.
     This sign is a joke and a prohibition, referring to the love locks that had to be removed from the Ponts des Arts bridge in Paris because over time they added 45 tons of weight to it. Somehow folks had managed to get a few locks on this bridge in a difficult to reach spot just to the right of where I’m standing; they’re still there because it’s too dangerous to try to remove them. 20-40 of them maybe.

     

     We saw lots of great views of Downtown and Midtown Manhattan today. (These two are all Downtown; while we could see Midtown pretty clearly from the bridge, it was too far away to do well in photos.)

     

     Above and below: a war memorial in Brooklyn Heights, and the park it’s in.

     

     Lots of famous writers lived in Brooklyn Heights over the years, including Normal Mailer, Truman Capote (above), and Arthur Miller (below).

     

    Dante took this for us. This and the one below were taken from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

     

     

     Dan took these just as the tour was about to head into Dumbo. We split about this time.

     

     Part of the reason we left right then was we were at the Fulton Ferry Landing and wanted to take a ferry across the East River back to downtown Manhattan. And got some great views again.

     

     That’s our ferry above. It’s bigger than it looks. And it was air conditioned. We were oh so grateful for that. The last couple of days have been hot and humid (at least for us).

    It was literally a 5 minute ferry ride to the pier at Wall Street. We found a noodle place to stop for a quick lunch and got back to the hotel around 1:40. We wanted to leave no later than 2:30pm and were able to get out by 2pm. And a good thing. There were delays due to modified subway routes and then Dan got stopped at security for a baggage search and that took forever.

    His flight was leaving about 5:30 on American; mine about 7:20 on JetBlue. Despite flying out of different terminals, I went with him so he could plant me in the American lounge at Terminal 8. We said goodbye as they assigned us to showers. By the time I was done and had gotten situated in the lounge, he texted me he was already on the plane. Soon after, I was notified that my flight had been delayed until 8:30. So, although I sometimes give Dan a hard time about his thing for lounges (I call him a lounge lizard!), at this moment I am very grateful for it as it’s 7:30pm and I’m still here 3 hours after I arrived. Dan texted me 30-45 minutes ago that he’d landed already. So Not Fair :) But glad he’s safe in Raleigh.

    A few shots of the lounge from the 2nd place I was sitting. I wasn’t at a table initially, and when I realized I would have time to actually write the blog – I would originally have been pleased to just get the photos organized – I moved to something more comfortable for writing.

     

    Final Thoughts
    [All of the above was written in the lounge. Most of this below was written Sunday morning. I got home around 1:45am, unpacked, went to Safeway, and was asleep by about 3am. Had slept a little on the plane, then up again just after 6:30. I’m sure my sleep will be wonky for a few days.]

    So that’s it for this trip. As is our tradition, we conclude with some final thoughts about the trip overall, in no particular order.

    1. Dan’s favorite parts: the mosques in Istanbul and how welcoming they all were. Then Stonehenge and the 9/11 Memorial. And he loved the opportunity to experience the Conrad, as did I.
    2. My favorite parts: Istanbul in general, Dover Castle, and the 9/11 Memorial. And I enjoyed Stonehenge a lot more than I thought I was going to.
    3. We also enjoyed just being in Istanbul and experiencing a culture that was on some levels very different than anything we’d experienced before, and on others it seemed very normal. I am grateful that the first hour in the taxi wasn’t an omen for the rest of the trip: loud, hot, uncomfortable, aggressive; some because of traffic, some because of the dynamics between the driver and the additional passenger we picked up at the airport. What were we thinking? Thankfully the rest of that trip was pretty stress free. We found the people to be lovely, truly friendly, and welcoming to us everywhere we went. We loved experiencing the mosques and learning more about Islam. And we loved people watching in the neighborhoods. It’s there that you really see different cultures as just people: couples being couples, families being families, eating, drinking, laughing, all the same things we love and do. You don’t need to understand the language to observe the humanity we all have in common.
    4. Driving in the UK was interesting. Dan drove us over 630 miles in 7 days. In the end he said he was glad he got an automatic because adjusting to drive on the left was enough, so not having to layer a stick shift into that was good. That aside, the driving really worked for us for this kind of trip and we would definitely do it again. We did have challenges parking and next time we will be better prepared for that. Google Maps again was our friend. Our car had a USB and we just plugged the phone in and followed the navigation. (Oh I made that sound so simple. There were times it wasn’t; the signs in UK were confusing and often didn’t match what Google was speaking so it was disorienting. It took us nearly the whole trip to realize the signs at each exit of a roundabout tell you where you’re going, not where you are.) In addition to navigation, we used Google to find ATMs, parking garages (“car parks”), to learn that Salisbury had a free lot on Sundays, etc. It’s our #1 tool when traveling.
    5. The other priceless tool for us are portable phone chargers. Can’t use Google as much as we do without them :) We had one last year; this year we had two!, although rarely used both at the same time. They allow you to be worry-free about where you’re going to be next. We would often walk around with the phone connected to the battery in our pocket. They also come in handy in airports that aren’t as update as we’d like them to be in 2017.
    6. On this trip, the English Heritage membership was also incredibly valuable. It never occurred to me to consider looking for what is essentially a country-wide museum pass. That we stumbled across it that first Friday afternoon in English changed the focus of the whole trip.
    7. One thing we weren’t prepared for and I don’t see how we would have thought to look into this: some of the British currency we brought with us, leftover from our 2014 trip, didn’t work. The 5’s we had were put out of circulation in May after the Bank of England issued new ones last summer. And new 1 pound coins were recently introduced. Parking meters weren’t accepting them almost as a rule because they were 12-sided, not perfectly round, and they weren’t calibrated to accept them. We exchanged the 5 we had at a Cardiff bank, and in Oxford got a bank to change a 10 for us into 2 and 1 pound coins, ensuring the 1 pounds were “old.” The teller just smiled knowingly when I explained the problem. (And there’s a little bit more about the Oxford driving/parking nightmare I didn’t get into on that day when I wrote it, but helps explain our frustration with all of it and why we were ready to move on by the next day.)
    8. We typically walk an average of 8-9 miles a day and driving didn’t get in the way of that. Our average for the trip according to our iPhones was 8.4miles. From the same source, the most number of floors we climbed were 44 – that was the day of the neighborhoods in Istanbul, 2nd day of the trip. All those hills!
    9. And finally, one of the things we both loved about Istanbul was hearing the Call to Prayer. It is broadcast 5 times a day. We didn’t hear it each time, but when we did it never failed to mesmerize. It was oddly comforting, despite also being the touchstone for “you’re not in Kansas anymore.” One of the things I love about foreign travel is how immersed you become in it right away, and this was a layer we hadn’t experienced before. That immersion is what helps me disconnect from work and the daily routine we left behind, and hearing this prayer several times a day just served as a reminder for why we travel: to create time for reflection, relaxation, learning, and experiencing new things.
    Thanks for coming along. We hope you enjoyed it and look forward to the next time. We don’t know yet where or when it will be, but there will definitely be a next time….