Flower Market and the LA River

One morning we got up early and drove into downtown LA to see the flower market. At first we thought we could go at about 2 AM (and were considering it), but it turns out the flower market is only open to wholesalers that early. We had to wait until after 7 or 8...and I think we ended up there around 9. It's in the warehouse district.

And it was in fact in warehouses full of people working: moving truckloads of tropicals and watering buckets of lilies. We kept having to dodge carts and hand trucks, and it was interesting to be on the edge of these people's daily routine. Some of my favorites were these bromeliads, and there was also a whole section full of huge orchids in all kinds of pinks. Many of other non-professionals there milling around were wedding planners or women planning their own weddings. Lots of cheap and healthy houseplants abounded, but eventually the pollen clouds starting getting to us and we made our way back the versa. It was hard to tear myself away and leave empty handed.

Next up was a drive by Han's house, even though she's back in Philadelphia. I wanted to get a picture of her street and door anyway, so I can more easily imagine her in LA. Ray and I spent a lot of time trying to imagining Han in LA. Her big piece of advice was to bring sunglasses, so when I imagine her here, I think about the sunglasses. Anyway: her apartment is nestled in a converted warehouse. The streets around it bustled with tractor trailers and delivery trucks, and it took us a minute to find it because the streets kept dead-ending at warehouses.


Last that morning, before heading back into downtown LA proper, was a trip over the LA river. We've been watching lots of movies and tv shows set in LA in the last few weeks, and they all had shots of the river--usually some murderer running through it or some shots to use this damp concrete void as a metaphor for the damp concrete void of LA. It was just a few blocks from Han's house, and after a very short and stinky delay behind five trashtrucks at a stop light, we took a couple of drives over it.
. There wasn't any place to pull over and take a picture--it's not that kind of river.

The Beverly Laurel

So I took some time in picking out our hotel. We're not made of money, so it had to be affordable, but I am too picky at this point in my life to stay somewhere totally crappy. And we needed a good location--easily accessible to the myriad places we wanted to go. And a nice bed, fun space, etc. were all in demand.

At first, I wanted to stay at the Standard Hotel on Sunset. It's a part of a hip chain, kind of like the W. But at $250 a night, it was a bit too pricey (but certainly not crazy, at least by Philly hotel standards). We ended up staying instead at the Beverly Laurel.

It's extremely well located on Beverley Boulevard in Fairfax (kind of south of West Hollywood and east of Beverly Hills). There was parking, a diner downstairs called "Swingers" (that was used in m"Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion") and each room had been redone with cute colors and movie star decor and a kind of retro vibe. It was well priced (about $140 a night) with free parking and internet.

The BL is an old-school Hollywood kind of place with a pool in the middle that all of the rooms face via a balcony. The only downside of this was that the windows all faced the pool, so there was little light when you drew your blinds for privacy. The bathroom was huge though and had been recently renovated and included a really long stall-style shower with three shower heads a bench (I think this was meant for people to use when shaving their legs--which we did not do, but it was nice to know the option was there). And look who was over our toilet! -->

All in all, for others looking to travel to LA, I recommend this spot. It was like 20 or 30 minutes tops from everywhere we wanted to go. And the staff was really nice. Parking was tight but never a real problem. The room was clean and had a fridge and great bathroom. The TV was lacking, the internet was not free and the linens weren't much better than like a Ramada Inn. Those smaller things would represent my only reservation about recommending it--if it didn't force the prices to get way jacked up, I'd recommend to the owners a small investment in those kinds of quality of stay types of things.

Day 4 and beyond

So obviously we stopped blogging regularly. Our bad. So rather than trying to recreate the days I'll be writing about some of our experiences and the things we did as individual posts.

More to come...

Day 3: Portland in the sticks and in the city

So these are going to be some quick, backwards looking posts since we have gotten a bit behind.

On Saturday, we drove with Chris, Siobhan and the baby to the Columbia River Gorge. It's a canyon and was a really important water connection between Oregon and the rest of the country. In just under a half hour drive, we were surrounded by mountains, waterfalls, hiking trails and had gorgeous views of the Oregon and Washington state...and some trains. We visited a few different falls, and Joel and I took a really quick walk up one mountainside. It was really steep and really pretty. Connecting the sites we were seeing was a road (the Columbia River Gorge highway I believe), with a railway parallel to it (and still active with Union Pacific freight travel today). At one of our stops, Multonomah Falls, I stayed close to the outdoor stalls and snack bar, while Joel climbed up to a bridge with a view. I was pretty lucky that there was a railroad society table there that I got to check out and find out more about the trains. We also stopped at a few more spots along the way--including a really cool and crazy Deco, kind of octagonal building on a hilltop which had a view of mountains as far as the eye could see and up and down the Columbia River. Joel loved this spot and attempted to take a series of panoramic shots, and then ended up finding a gift shop downstairs and simply buying one. Ah, commerce.

On our way back, we stopped to pick up some really good Vietnamese food at a place called Pho Jasmine on Killingsworth Ave near the house. We ate. It was really good. The food was frankly worthy of long and lurid blog posting of its own. But I will show some restraint and save the craziness for what's next.

After we ate, Chris and Siobhan were kind enough to lend us their car and we went downtown for the main event: Powell's books. But before we got there, we sort of tooled around for a bit and drove past Portland State University where I once spent some time at for a USSA conference. We also drove by the main branch of Portland Public which was unfortunately closed. But it looked cool from the outside. Along the way, it was impossible (and possibly sinful) to ignore the trolley tracks all over the places.

Ok, so: Powell's. Powell's is called the City of Books, and it certainly puts the Strand in NYC to shame. It's huge--organized into rooms, by colors (like the "Purple Rooom") based on genre and has a mix of new and used books. I dropped Joel off in the Sci-Fi section and looked around on my own. It took us about two hours to get through the store, including a coffee/tea break. The place was packed with people (it seems Portlanders like to read) and it was a relaxed and fun place to be. And the books!

Not everything under the sun was to be found, but at least we had the moon...Joel and I both did pretty well. We decided to ship home whatever we bought rather than try to cram purchases into our already too heavy luggage. Suffice to say this opened the flood gates perhaps a bit too much, but with free shipping and a well-documented love of books, who cares? Joel was a bit sad that we left the store with only three books (2 of his and 1 of mine) on hand, but when we get home, and a box of books is delivered to our door, I am sure he'll rally.

After Powell's we drove around downtown some more to look at lofts and apartments that reminded us both of Amsterdam some and we found the place that the streetcars sleep at night. And stalked them. Then we drove back to North Portland and met up with Siobhan and Chris and James at a park. The neighborhood association was screening "Notorious" and we managed to catch the last quarter of it. Then back home.

 

Day two: solstice

The flight from Denver to Portland was fast and smooth, although I couldn't shut off the little video screen for my seat and had to put up with ads in between the crude maps with a giant plane covering half of Idaho inching northwest.

I'd never seen the Rockies, see, and being partial to a certain run of green mountains, was ready to write off those young upstarts. But they were amazing...snowy peaks and bumpy ridges like the ribs of a giant, mountain lakes crusted with ice and deep furrows. I spent almost the whole flight gaping out the window.
Chris picked us up and brought us to Siobhan's and his house where we met baby James. Eventually we had lunch, then Ray and I went out to St. John's, the neighborhood nearby. We bought food at a plain coop that puts Mariposa's pretensions to shame and I bought an Ayn Rand book (because there's no time like the present to read some good capitalist and fascist fiction) at a used/independent bookstore. >We went to a Salvation Army that was no good, then stopped at a Fred Meyers for more groceries. Then we came back and Siobhan and I took naps while Ray make eggplant Parmesan for dinner. Yum and do.

After dinner we went for a walk around the block, up to the bluff overlooking the river and city on the campus of the University of Portland. Everyone who lives along the road overlooking the river has Florida rooms with no curtains so they can soak up Mt. Hood and the riverport.

Mt. Hood is HUGE and SNOWY and I really want to bring it back with me. We could plop it right on top of the Northeast, so I could always have a hulking, snow-capped peak to watch. It's the longest day of the year, too, and we are lucky enough to spend it up here.

Day one: delayed

So we got to the airport early for our 6:10 flight from Philadelphia thanks to my pop. However, when we still had not boarded right around the time we were supposed to take off, we found out that a mechanical failure had occurred, and a part was being driven from Dulles airport in Washington that would fix the problem.

Originally we were supposed to fly to Denver and connect to a flight that would get us to Portland at around 11 PM PDT. Because the Philly flight was late, almost immediately we were told that we'd have to stay in a Denver hotel (on Frontier airline's dime) and catch the first flight to Portland in the morning.


So we hung out in Philly as you can see, and enjoyed the art and the cool lighting designs (there's also a really, really cool bird sculpture--if you can stomach looking at the birds. I didn't take a pic, but found one here).

Our flight did end up leaving till 10:30, getting us to Denver at about 12:30 AM MT (or 2:30 eastern) and after getting a voucher for our hotel and catching a shuttle, we did not get to our room till about 2 am. Then we found out that in order to get back to the airport we'd have to take a 4:30 am shuttle or pay for a cab. Based on principle alone, we chose to take the shuttle, rather than shell out $50 for a mistake that had nothing to do with us (except perhaps our choosing Frontier airlines in the first place). For the record, our brief sleep in the Denver hotel (1.5 hours) was delightful. Lovely duvets. But our time there was too short.

Our early AM shuttle ride did however afford us this excellent view of the sunrise and very cool Denver airport:

Denver and Philly's newish terminal A should both be commended for their excellent designs. There were just a tone of design elements in both that made being delayed/trapped a bit more bearable.

And we had a $27 breakfast on the airline in an "outdoor" Mexican cafe deep inside the airport.

An inauspicious start to our trip perhaps, but not really that big of a deal. Meanwhile, we're both going to upload our pictures as much as we can on Flickr, so check them out too:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/conchettaonthemove/