Morro Bay

This past weekend I was up in Morro Bay, which is north of Los Angeles.  The photo above is of Morro Rock.  (It's big... the scale in the photo is deceiving.)  I did a couple of hikes and visited Hearst Castle, so stay tuned... photos to come in the next couple of days!

Bike Rack

I found this bike rack interesting, it's behind the LACMA art museum.  I guess you just have to bring a padlock to use it, it's got the cables already attached to the rack.  I wonder how strong and reliable the cables are?  I like the rack, it would be easy to secure any bike to that design, and it would be nice to travel with just a good padlock.  However, this is the only place I have ever seen this kind of rack, so the convenience factor would be limited!

The flavour of America

America tastes different from Canada.  One of the interesting things about being here long-term is getting to try the different flavours of otherwise familiar items.

They have oodles of different flavours of both Wheat Thins and Triscuits here.  I'd never seen either of these up in Canada, but I hope they cross the border soon- both the Sundried Tomato and Basil Wheat Thins and the Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits are divine.  At the grocery store I counted 12 different flavours and shapes of Triscuits, and 10 different versions of Wheat Thins.  The same is true of things like Cheerios (which we do have lots of varieties of in Canada, but here, of course, even more!) and other breakfast cereals (who knew Cap'n Crunch could come in so many... and I have been a good girl and not tried a single one!)  Things like ramen noodles come in southwest flavours.

There are things you can't get here too, and it's funny sometimes what they've never even heard of.  I can't find perogies anywhere.  I've combed through grocery stores for garlic sauce, the stuff that comes in four strengths in Canada (mild, medium, strong, and honey garlic), and the clerk in the store had never even heard of it.  "You know, that stuff you put on spare ribs" I said helpfully.  "Barbecue sauce?" he replied.  Oh, my.  It really is a different culture here.

I can't get Pad Thai sauce, and we have Asian grocery stores here of every variety, and I have done the tour.  I did locate plum sauce, but it's tricky to find.  Haven't found sweet and sour sauce, but I was only looking for that to help me find the garlic sauce as they're usually next to each other... nope, they don't have that either.  They do have zillions of Asian sauces in the grocery stores though... many, many more than back home, but not the fakey Canadianized versions I guess.

Of course, it's a salsa-a-palooza here, and all the other Mexican food items are also plentiful and delicious.  It's nice to be able to not only reliably find medium salsa (back home it's often just mild and strong, unless you're lucky), but to find medium in many different flavours!  Very nice.

It's impossible to buy spices like one does at Bulk Barn, even in places that sell other things in bulk like that, no spices.  They're really expensive in the grocery store too!  Luckily, the dollar store has a limited selection, and the quality seems OK.  I'll have to compile some spices to bring when I come back next fall.  There are things I haven't cooked down here as I don't want to spend $50 to buy little bottles of the spices they'd take, instead of a couple of bucks at Bulk Barn back home.

Oh, and dollar stores sell dairy products and produce here!  That was weird when I first saw it.

Overall I prefer food shopping here, as most stuff is usually a bit cheaper (but not always!), and the different varieties on things are pretty interesting and tasty.  I'll sure be working up an appetite for perogies by the time I get back to Canada though.

Quick thoughts on rain

It's raining today for the third day in a row, which would make it around the 8th or so day of rain in total since I arrived on September 16.

I notice a change in my attitude to the weather- back home, if the forecast calls for rain, I'd ask myself, "should I take an umbrella?", and of course I would.  And off I'd go.

Here, when the forecast calls for rain (if the threat is convincing enough, as they totally over-forecast it), I ask myself "do I need to go out?  Is it that important?  I can cancel my plans, there's always tomorrow".  And I tend to stay in. 

I don't feel particularly wimpy (I just got in from the rain, survived it, with no whining or feelings of persecution), but it is interesting that when rain is a much more infrequent event, it becomes a much bigger deal.  I was glad to get out today in it though, I have to build my weather endurance back up for my return to Canada for the summer!

LACMA

Last week I visited LACMA... not to be confused with MOCA... LACMA is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  It has a wide range of collections, including two buildings dedicated respectively to Korean and Japanese art.

I liked it.  It's large, a complex of five buildings, or maybe even more, but five have art in them right now.  Some good stuff was closed for renovations though, but still lots to see.  I thought their Picasso collection was better than what the Picasso museum in Paris has.

I'd talk more about it but I can feel your eyes glazing over already.  I didn't take any interior photos, but here is the outdoor sculpture garden, many of the works are by Rodin or his buddies (they're kind of lined up in between the palms):

It just wouldn't be an art museum without the requisite Henry Moore sculpture in the courtyard:

 

 

The entrance to the contemporary wing is on the third floor of that building, it has a great view of the Hollywood hills, and the western portion of my rental complex (the painted highrises and yellow townhouses that surround them, click it to enlarge):

There's still one more art museum on my list to see, the Getty.  (There are two Gettys in town- I was already at the Getty Villa, but there's another one too, that I think has a bigger collection of art).  I hope to get out there soon.

This is what a creek looks like in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a dry town climate-wise, and they don't do water all that well here.  This is Ballona creek, and today I went for a bike ride along the path that runs beside it.  Not exactly your average back-to-nature experience.

This truck seems to have been hired to drag away the last remaining vestiges of life along the corridor:

 

 

One spot (below) has a good view of the Hollywood sign (seen at the top of the closer hills in the background.)  If it wasn't hazy the mountains would have been quite nice from here too, but you can just barely see them today:

I'll try to get some photos of the Los Angeles river while I'm here.  It's similar to Ballona creek, only it has even less water in it.  I've heard though that when it storms these waterways fill up, and can be quite fast and dangerous.

The Jay Leno Show

On Wednesday I attended a taping of The Jay Leno Show at NBC studios in Burbank.

It was fun.  While Jay Leno is not as funny as Craig Ferguson, he has a much better rapport with the audience- we actually felt like we were part of the experience, and not just onlookers.  It's an efficient taping too- it's "live on tape", so the one hour episode took one hour to tape... well, just over, since we had a quick field trip outside.  Jay also comes out before he changes into his suit, and chats with the audience for a few minutes before the show, answering questions and posing with audience members for photos.  It's a nice touch.

Look, here I am in the audience!  Yeah, I didn't have the greatest seat- it was actually front-row, but waaaaay off to the side, behind the producers and cameras, which you can't really see here (the centre rows go much further forwards than the side rows).  This actually suited me fine, I find the making-of the show to be much more interesting than the show itself.

The main guest was Heidi Klum.  The lucky part about sitting in my way-out-of-the-way section was that we were herded outside during a commerical break to provide a small outdoor audience for Heidi to drive the Green Car Challenge course.  Various guests drive this electric car around a small track, trying to avoid obstacles and beat the time of other celebrities.

 

Here's Heidi doing the course...

Overall, a fun and efficiently-run show, if not terribly highbrow (not that I was expecting highbrow!).  The only negative to the experience was how long they kept us waiting outside before the show- I was one of the later arrivals, arriving just after the 2:15 pm deadline, and it was over an hour before we were herded into the studio.  That's a long time to stand in line.  Good thing I wasn't early!

Note:  it's obvious these aren't my own photos, right?  They're screen captures of the video of the episode from the NBC site.   Shh, don't tell them, I'm sure it's frowned upon!

Pedestrian street off Rodeo Drive

I was running an errand in Beverly Hills last week and was on foot this time, so I had a look at that little pedestrian street that I mentioned back in October that's off Rodeo Drive.  Another little piece of fake Europe, with expensive stores and beautiful people (even the tourists!).

Wayfarers Chapel

This chapel is out in Palos Verdes, I saw it on the same day as the sea cave hike.  It's made of glass, and was designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright.  It was completed in 1951.  I couldn't go in as a wedding was in progress (as I've heard is pretty much continuously the situation, it's a very popular wedding venue).

It's surrounded by trees and made of glass, so you can hardly see it, it disappears beautifully into it's environment:

Here's the entrance, and you can see the bride up near the altar:

 

Sea caves in Palos Verdes

I'd wanted to visit Palos Verdes for a while- it's the community on the hill at the south end of the beach (you can see photos of it at the bottom of this post from October).  One of the hiking meetup groups had a hike last Saturday to the sea caves in Palos Verdes- cool!  I hadn't even known there were sea caves out there.

Here's the start of the hike, our trail is seen in the shrubbery on the little hill at the right:

This is an unusual hike (for the L.A. area) in that we start at a high point and hike down.  Here's a view of where we're going, the first cave we'll see is at the end of that point at the left, you can't see the cave yet:

 

The trail down is steep, and has some switchback: 

 

We came to another spot where you could look the other way and see the point where the second cave is located, it's at the end of that point, and again, you can't see it yet:

 

Down at beach level:

 

   

These rocks below at the tidepools are beautiful!

 

 

Here's one end of the first seacave, it has a pillar in the middle and the waves were washing through it.

 

Tidepools:

 

Look!  Starfish, sea anemones, and crunchy shelled things too!

 

This is another sea cave that we couldn't get to, I'm looking at it across the back entrance to the one with the pillar:

 

This poor seal has a wound on it, I'm not sure if that's why it didn't swim away from us when we went by.

 

Close to the next sea cave, there were a bunch of big birds, I had thought they were cormorants but I've looked at internet photos since and I don't think so... anyone know what they are?  Pelicans?

 

Sea cave #2 (or #3, if you count that one near the other we couldn't get to):

 

Heading back up from the beach.  It was a big group of around 60-70 hikers, and this is only around half of them in this line:

 

There are always dogs on these hikes.  Here's one cute little beast of burden:

 

This one got a ride in a baby carrier- it has two broken legs!  No, not hiking injuries, I think she said the dog broke them jumping off the bed or something like that:

 

The sun was getting low at the finish of the hike.  That's Catalina island (yes, the salad dressing is named after it) on the left horizon: