I’m on a long weekend to La-La Land, with planned visits to a couple of galleries and museums.

After locating a cozy restaurant in the neighborhood (see photos of our focaccia bread with tapenade and ahi tuna appetizer) and delighting in a meal of watercress, pine nuts and parmesan salad, angel hair pasta, and hazelnut ice cream in a waffle tart, my next venture was “cruisin’ along Wilshire by foot the following day.

The LA Metro, located within one block of our hotel near Universal Studios, turned out to be a great option and asset. It allowed us to maintain our public transit-first approach to travel. Gee Kin took it to his business meeting and I took the red and purple line to the museum. The La Brea Tar Pits and the LACMA are located along the Museum Mile on Wilshire Avenue. The 3-4 mile walk from the Wilshire-Western Station to these destinations got me back in the groove of getting exercise while “cruisin’ along” plenty of new shops and sights. The screen shot shows the Metro route in red (without the purple extension that I took one way); the blue dotted line is what I walked.

The Metro in LA, while a fairly new invention, is very accessible and easy to use. Most tourists would not consider using it, but it in fact does its job in a very modern, non-LA sort of way. It may not be your first thought, but if you give it a try you will find it’s a pretty good solution to getting around LA. While it’s still not a natural thought and takes work, it gets everyone out of their cars! So, why not??

Starting my walk with Korea town, I traversed the residential area of Wilshire Park, where the golden 30’s era chateaux and mini mansions seemed frozen in time and space. All the stars of yesteryear felt at home here. Amidst tree-lined streets (reminiscent of those in Sacramento from my November post last year), stripped palm fronds lay at the foot of stately trees like abandoned children torn from their parents. Similarly, stumpy, sagging and dated Art Deco buildings bleated for love but got little attention.

Just as I wondered if anyone had the uncool nerve to carry an umbrella in LA for sun shading, I suddenly saw someone doing exactly that. Finally, I thought, some practical minds at work. You wouldn’t be caught dead doing that in San Francisco with its perpetual foggy bottoms and rare temperature highs. The irony is that I dived into a Rite-aid to buy an umbrella but not for this purpose. I had lost an umbrella last year and heard from Gee Kin that the coveted little device came from Rite-aid. The design, size, sturdiness, and all features were priceless. (Tip for today: get one of these in your travel repertoire!) So much so that I beat it to the first Riteaid I have seen in 9 months (which happened to be in LA on this walk), faced the wrath of the cashier who stared at me like I was a stark raving idiot, and carried it around for a day in 90 degree weather (with no intention of using it for sun shading–I’m from San Francisco, after all!)

But I digress. See the next post for what I really did.