Re: LAX
A second trip to Los Angeles.
I haven’t ventured all that far west, in college all my travels were eastward bound but with friends relocating to California, trips have started to pop up in my flight log.
Most of my time in the area has been spent in Los Angeles. I am still in the process of grasping and appreciating the true size of California, which looks like an inverted 10x optical zoom of New Jersey.
In car rides I zone out, give me a metro and a couple of walking days and I can piece a new location together with a sense of familiarity and recall. In a passenger’s seat I day dream, all the street signs look the same.
Since most of my time exploring LA has been in a car I have yet to commit the spaciousness of the region to memory, and it’ll probably take me a dozen visits to start to nail down that awareness in a way that can be translated to conversational banter, and elevate pre-baked fallback remarks that the weather offers.
This second visit to LA was heavy on the food itinerary, “I know we just ate but how are we feeling about [insert meal] next“ was a common refrain. Throughout all our meals I don’t think I once paused for a taco to sit on a plate long enough to be registered by my camera’s max shutter speed.
Some of the highlights included:
Eggslut: the Fairfax sandwich with hash browns;
Salt & Straw: a strawberry and olive oil ice cream;
Sweet Butter Kitchen: an omelette dish with nachos, what a combo!; and
Felix: a Venice Beach trattoria where I was introduced to a pillowy bread ‘sfincione‘ and squash blossoms.
Aside from the food stops we also made our way to a museum with a butterfly exhibit. I was nervous it might turn out to be a little grim since they’re pretty delicate insects and you never know what stage of their life cycle they’ll be at when you make your way into their habitat.
It was well worth the visit and the habitat was well taken care of. The butterflies seemed to flutter with a pretty solid awareness of the walking path, though it was a little stressful to monitor every movement you made.
We also took a day trip to a Danish village, Solvang, I only realized after we left that the bulk of my photos were in a bakery — priorities.
It was a cute little village area with lots of shops and charm, including a spice and tea store. They had this really pretty looking butterfly pea flower which looked like it could be a handy bluish food coloring.
There were a lot of winding roads to navigate in order to get to Solvang.
I learned my lesson about the curving roads from my first trip to the west coast, where our night out antics nearly came to throws the next morning as we made our way out for the day. Contesting those partial rotations along the varied elevations of the macadam, and the churn of traffic, tested my abdominal fortitude.
The scenes on the road were awesome and mountain-strewn, but much like my spice tolerance my comfort and willingness to explore heights has a low limit.
When it comes to travel I am not a huge fan airports, I much prefer the casualness of train stations, but Amtrak only goes so far.
On planes — and trains — I seek out the window seat, not just for the views but also for the ability to settle into my spot without having to keep an eye on the aisle or jockey for an arm rest. I have yet to sleep while in flight but was close to nodding out on a 13-hour long trip and might have succumbed had it not been for a passenger roaming the aisles, clutching his blanket like a cape, and intermittently grazing all the arms at rest along the aisle.
I think I am mentally geared to assume the east coast time zone is the correct time zone.
