I can't say I was sorry to leave Los Angeles. I would like like to visit again, especially since we have several friends in town who really enjoy living there, which makes visiting more enjoyable. However, we will certainly stay in a different hotel. On our last morning in L.A., I loaded up as much as I could carry and went to fetch the car from the valets. Being entirely fed up with the whole valet issue, I took the car out, and finding the side loading zone area inaccessible, I parked around the corner by the library and fed enough change to pay for an hour's parking. I walked back to the hotel to find that Liz had called the desk and argued with them about getting a cart to take the rest of our stuff down.
The hotel's policy is that they "don't loan carts to guests." They said they would send up a person with a cart. She told them that we would load and unload the cart. They obviously didn't tell him this, because as soon as he arrived he began grabbing stuff. We took the elevator down to the lobby and I loaded up again. The bellhop offered to take stuff to our car and I informed him (and Liz) that I was parked around the corner. He offered to let us pull up to the loading zone and I tersely stated that the car needed to stay where it was and I would take the stuff myself. Liz, tired of my crap, went off to check out while the bellhop looked incredibly confused. I dragged the suitcases out, loaded them in the car and came back for the rest. I picked up everything, thanked the man and waited for Liz to finish checking out. She had run down the list of complaints to the front desk and they actually took some charges off of our bill.
Two days earlier another couple staying at the same hotel for the wedding had an odor problem in their room and had gotten a new one only after a nasty argument with someone in the office and had similarly gotten a discount. This serves nicely to illustrate the myriad of problems with this place. In contrast, we stayed in nine or ten (mostly cheap) motels on this trip and in none of them were we inspired to complain about anything on checkout. They were of varying levels of quality, to be sure. Some had non or poorly functioning internet connections or breakfast ended too early or the air-conditioning blew the window curtains up (a perennial problem at Econo Lodges). But these were all minor annoyances in the overall scheme of things. The Westin so infuriated us that we were tempted several times to check out early and find another hotel.
A quick trip to the library to check our email and directions to the next city calmed us and soon we were on our way to Las Vegas. It was three-and-a-half years ago we were married in Vegas and we haven't been back since. The occasion this day was to pick up new skates for Liz.
Lunch was at The Hat. Having no Roadfood recommendations, we picked a random exit for gas and food and then stopped at the coolest looking place we saw. A large lighted sign with a chef's hat advertising "World Famous Pastrami" was enough for us to stop. I ordered a small gravy fries and a pastrami sandwich. Liz ordered loaded fries, again a small. A few minutes later, we had a pastrami sandwich and enough fries to feed eight people. I really don't want to know the size of the "large" fries. We didn't even come close to finishing either of the piles of fries, or my sandwich. Not because they weren't good, but because it was entirely too much food.
We made it to Vegas as night fell. In an amazing stroke of luck, Sin City Skates was open a bit late that night, so Liz was able to get her skates and other gear. SCS is right behind the Stratosphere, our hotel the week of our wedding.
We headed to the Peppermill Lounge on the strip for dinner. Our previous time in Vegas we had dessert at the Peppermill following the Penn & Teller show. This time we got to try the food, which is upscale diner fare. The food was good, but the atmos is really what makes the place. It's one of the few parts of "old Vegas" that's still left. Our 2004 trip was just in time to see the new Vegas begin to take over the old, and we could get a sense of what it used to be like. Since we were there, the Stardust has closed and been knocked down and the Frontier has closed. The Frontier will be demolished on November 13, to be replaced with another ugly Trump hotel. I'm not sure I ever want to go back. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I feel that way about New York as well, once the powers that be and large corporations finish turning it into "New York, the Theme Park (tm)".
The drive out was pleasant. There were several cars parked in front of the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign on the south end of the strip while their owners took pictures. We didn't stop, as we needed to get to Arizona and it was already late.
Our last full day in Los Angeles we woke up in a new room. The new room was nicer than the old room and it didn't reek, which was a plus. We got up relatively early and headed off to the Tiara Cafe for the post-wedding brunch. The Tiara Cafe is a small restaurant featuring locally sourced, organic food. My review is mixed. I was disappointed to note that the prix fixe menu prominently featured eggs, which I do not eat. As the groom doesn't either, I was surprised. It seemed like there was enough other stuff, though.
The problem was the service. Dishes were served in courses, but the courses were all served at different times to people at the same table, and in different orders. We had to wait for a half hour after being served our first course to get the second. People who came in were served theirs not only before us but before a group who were there longer than we were. Some tables had half the people served while the other half watched them eat for twenty minutes. Someone gave our table's meat plate to another table because we felt bad that they had to wait even longer than we did to get all of their food. Some people gave up and left to catch planes. And then they screwed up the billing. In short, I don't think these people have any idea how to cater a group function, so they really shouldn't.
The food, however, was very good. The berries and cream parfait was excellent. Everything else was quite good, and we loved the small organic food shop on the other side of the restaurant (which was, unfortunately, closed that morning). I imagine that Tiara Cafe is a good place for a nice leisurely brunch or Sunday dinner, but the group brunch was disappointing.
We left brunch and went to the open house for a short time and then ran off to try to cram all of our missed Friday sightseeing and errands. The short version is: we spent too long and too much money at Amoeba Records, I went to three camera shops to find a lens cap, we tried unsuccessfully for two hours to find a place to take a picture of the car with the Hollywood sign in the background and we waited far too long to eat.
After our dinner at EBISU, we went out to Santa Monica to visit again with a friend out there. We walked out to the pier and played video games. I hit the wall right after a game of Ms. Pac-Man and felt like I was going to collapse from exhaustion, so I went out and leaned on the fence looking at the Pacific in the dark until everyone was ready to leave.
I discussed food options with one of the people at the Golden Gopher, and I wrote a few of her recommendations down so I would remember them. Not so the Japanese place she recommended in Little Tokyo. So, we headed out to Little Tokyo with a half-remembered name and no address. After wandering around Little Tokyo for half an hour, we picked a place that was open. That place was EBISU.
The main reason I wanted to get sushi in California was because I was hoping for dishes we don't get on the east coast. In this sense, the appetizer section of the menu did not disappoint. Unfortunately, the sushi page was nothing special, but I still found things to order.
Baby octopus and kimchee were the first appetizers to arrive. The octopus were in a pungent sauce. They were a bit on the rubbery side, but still texturally interesting. Kimchee was decent, though not as good as the Korean places back in Syracuse. 
Next up was the Spicy Tuna Chips, a spicy tuna preparation on tortilla chips. These were quite good. Imagine a spicy tuna roll on a chip. Not quite Tuna Foie Gras, but interesting nonetheless.
My sushi entree was the rainbow roll. This was good, but not thrilling. It looked nice and the fish wasn't bad. But it was not particularly exciting. It was a kind of typical fish overload. I would have preferred a more interesting combination of tastes, but the sushi menu was more geared towards the pretty.
Not knowing what else is available and having not been overwhelmed by the menu, service (a bit slow) or food, I would recommend finding someone else's recommendation for L.A. sushi.
This is the part of the trip where I have very few pictures. I have more film pics than cellphone pics, but overall I didn't get as much as I would have liked. Truth be told, I was really tired and having trouble sleeping while we were in L.A. and we were really busy with wedding stuff. But first thing Sunday, I was off at the car wash scrubbing the filth and bugs off the car and vacuuming all the food and crud out of the carpets. It took longer than I expected and I had to dash back to the hotel. I dropped the car at the valet and told them to leave it out because I'd be right back. Fifteen minutes later, I was back fully showered and in a suit. I got to the cathedral just before the ceremony began.
Speaking of the wedding, I don't have much to say except it was a wedding and the cathedral is a really neat building. I'm just sorry I didn't get to see the priest so I could tell him he has a very impressive organ.
After the wedding, there was a rogue group set on getting food at In-N-Out Burger. They had wanted to try them in Vegas when we were all there for our wedding, but they hadn't made it. Most of them hadn't eaten yet, even though it after noon. I had grabbed some coffee and a muffin on my way to decorate the reception site at 9:00 AM, but I think I was alone. I got the directions and we caravaned over to the In-N-Out Burger on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. I felt a little weird standing in a fast food place in a suit, but what the hell, right? The food was pretty good for fast food and it was fairly cheap. I recommend it if one is out in CA and in need of a quick meal.
Following the In-N-Out Burger extravaganza was the wedding reception and after party at the Golden Gopher. We had some friends in L.A. unconnected with the wedding to see and we arranged to meet them at the after party. The Gopher is apparently owned by the same people as 7 Grand. The room is nice, with some nice seating spaces and a great jukebox. The box was kicking out random tunes when we first got there. We had the place to ourselves as it had just opened. Slowly the wedding group arrived and someone played something less than stellar on the jukebox, whereupon Zach took it on himself to put in a dollar and play some DEVO. I followed up with a five and programmed in a good 90 minutes or so of punk rock and rock & roll. By the time the hour was up most of the wedding crowd had bailed and the place had packed up and gotten incredibly noisy. We took off for somewhere quieter, which turned out to be the local IHOP.
Another hour later, we headed back to the hotel to find that our room had begun to smell like mildew. It was too much to take, so Liz called the front desk and got us another room and we packed up to move. It was about 1:30 AM. We managed to get the room moved in under a half hour and collapsed.
Our first day in Los Angeles was spent sleeping in incredibly late. I didn't get in until after 3:00 AM and Liz came in a couple of hours after. I had noticed when I got in that the floor on the far side of the room was wet. I was too tired to deal with it and crashed. When I got up, I noticed that the floor was soaked for about three feet around the air conditioning vent. This included the entire far side between the bed and the wall, and from the end of the bed past the table on the other edge of the room for about half the width of the bed. The comforter had gotten knocked partially off the bed and become thoroughly soaked. We stopped at the front desk and asked for it to be cleaned.
So, instead of getting out early and doing some exploring and running some errands, we found ourselves looking for breakfast around 1:00 in the afternoon. We eventually found a deli in the underground shopping center across the street where we got a couple of sandwiches. The next order of business was finding an internet connection. The hotel wanted $12.95 per computer per day for wireless access, and we weren't having any of it. Fortunately for us, our hotel is across the street from the Los Angeles Central Library, where we were able to take advantage of a free wireless connection. We got caught up on email and found directions to a few places we wanted to check out later in the weekend, and then Liz had to be at the wedding rehearsal.
I got the car out of the valet garage (grumble), dropped Liz off at the cathedral and went looking for a car wash. Naturally, I got stuck in traffic, but I did eventually find a car wash on the edge of Koreatown. By that time, though, I needed to be at the rehearsal dinner, so I headed back downtown to Blossom. Blossom is a small Vietnamese restaurant on Main St. It was a bit small for the crowd, but the food was quite good.
After dinner, we headed back to hotel, as everyone was pretty well beat. However, a group of us decided to meet up for dessert and drinks down in the hotel bar. We were the second group of two to show up downstairs. We perused the menus for a bit, then a waitress came by and asked if our whole group was there yet. Rani started to answer "no, but we'd like to order anyway," but the woman had walked away. A few minutes later the rest of the group turned up, but the waitstaff completely ignored us until we left about a 40 minutes later. I'm not quite sure why they would let a table be taken up for an hour and not get an order out of the six people sitting there. It did nothing to endear us to the hotel.
After the obligatory couple of hours stuck in traffic on the 5, we arrived in Los Angeles around 6:00 PM. After quickly finding our hotel, we discovered that the only parking was valet, and $30 a day. This is something that I think should have been noted when the reservations were made. I don't have a problem with the charge, but they weren't particularly upfront about it. We checked in and then pulled around and into the garage. Our car was completely full of not only our suitcases, including the extra bags of clothes we brough for the wedding and related events that has lived in the car the entire trip up to this point, but also the CDs we bought in Austin, all the tiki stuff we bought in San Diego and other assorted junk accumulated on the road.
I pulled in, Liz talked to the valets and I started ripping the car apart. I attempted to make it clear to the valets that we didn't need any "help," but they were slow in getting the hint. I did manage, in about three minutes, to pull all the suitcases and bags we'd need in L.A. out of the car and get all of the shopping we didn't need packed into the back of the car. This left us with a large stack of bags that normally we would have moved in a couple of trips to the room. Instead, we carried as many as we could (mostly shopping bags) and the bellhop person brought the rest a little later.
Anyone who knows me knows I'm a little weird. I'm very much a D.I.Y. type. I can carry my own bags, I can park my own car and I can open the door for myself without needing someone holding his hand out for a couple of dollars to do it for me. I realize that for some people, maybe most people for all I know, enjoy "luxury" hotels and places where there is someone to wipe your ass for you, but it only makes me angry. I can do for myself most of the time and I prefer to do so, thank you very much.
We were in the room one minute and the phone calls started coming in. Liz had to go meet the bride and some other people. Now. They were on their way out to the bachelorette party. Apparently, I was supposed to meet up with bachelor party. OK, no problem. If I wasn't, I would have just wandered around. This gave me somewhere to wander to. The only problem was we were still waiting for our clothes to be delivered. They turned up not too long after and we went out for the evening. 
The evening is a bit of a blur. I wish I could remember the name of the Irish pub where we ate dinner and drank the first several rounds. The Guinness Beef stew was very good. We left there and headed to 7 Grand for Scotch and cigars. I'm not a big Scotch drinker, but this was my chance to try Laphroaig. About 150 years ago, back before any schmuck could sign up for internet access, I was on an online service owned by General Electric called GEnie (no, really). There were a couple of guys on there who swore by the stuff. I've wanted to try it ever since, but I usually drink in pubs; places with a much better beer selection than liquor selection. And I'm not one to buy a $65 bottle of liquor without ever having tried the stuff. Especially given, as I said, that I'm not much of a Scotch drinker. My whisky drinking is generally confined to Jameson in the winter when it's really cold. And given that I live in Florida, those days are few and far between. So, when we walked into the bar and were confronted with an enormous selection of whiskies, I knew what I was ordering.
After the initial shock (and the sensation that I was drinking lighter fluid wore off), I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the stuff. I understand what they say now when Laphroaig is described as "peaty." It tastes a bit like the swamp. And yes, that's a good thing. I would definitely have this again if given the opportunity, which may not be until we're in Los Angeles again.
After a couple of drinks and some interesting conversation (who knew architects were paid as poorly as librarians?), we set off to another bar, which turned out to have some terrifying club night going on, most likely due to the art walk. The place was packed with pretty people, the music was insanely loud and there was some sort of photography session happening in the back courtyard. We squeezed into the back, commandeered a table that someone was leaving and drank our one round before fleeing. We stopped for tacos on our way to the next place. I took a picture so I would remember the place.
We ended the night at a small cafe where several members of the group attempted to convince a group of drunk, underage girls not to attempt to drive back to the suburbs, but to instead call a cab. They wandered in so the driver could get a cup of coffee for the road. I don't think we were successful, but not for lack of trying. Quote of the night: "I hate art walk."
For the second day in a row, we went to a Roadfood recommended breakfast place around lunch time. This time, though, we actually missed breakfast and had to order off the lunch menu. FOr the second day in a row, we were also in a place where we helped bring down the average age. Although not quite so restricted to the older crowd (there were a couple groups of thirtysomethings there who looked they were on their lunch break) this time, Hob Nob Hill is in other ways similar to Millie's Pancake Haus. Perched in a hill above the San Diego airport, Hob Nob Hill has been serving the same food since 1944. I don't think they've changed the decor or the uniforms since then, either.
The menu is fairly standard American/Diner fare: a lot of sandwiches, grilled beef liver, roast turkey, chicken fried steak... The service is excellent. Hob Nob Hill employs a team serving method wherein tables are not assigned to individual servers. The entire team serves the entire dining room and they all split the tips. While this could be a disaster, this restaurant employs it to excellent results. The person who takes your order may or may not be the person who brings it or refills your coffee cup, but someone will be there to do it. It seems that whomever is in the kitchen when the food comes up brings it to the table. Whichever server passes by your table and notices the empty coffee cup will grab the pot and fill it. The food, while standard fare, is done exceedingly well. I have never had a restaurant Reuben as non-greasy as the one I had here. (I have, however, made them that way myself.)
In short, Hob Nob Hill is a pleasant, non-pretentious place to get an old-style American meal.
I am now several days behind for a couple of reasons. No, not because I was too busy having fun. I was busy with wedding events, but the main thing is the hotel. We stayed at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles. Unfortunately, our stay was not particularly pleasant. It wasn't just the enforced valet parking, the $12.95 per computer per day internet access charge, the fact that they wouldn't let us carry our own bags up to our room or that they wouldn't serve a group of six in the hotel lobby bar. It wasn't even that our room flooded, and then started to reek as it dried. It was all of this. And the short of it is that we didn't have internet access. We did go across the street to the Los Angeles Central Library to use their wifi, but we weren't there long enough for me to post anything.
We are currently in Williams, AZ in a little coffee shop. I would post more, but the lighting is looking good again and so I want to get outside and take more pictures.
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