I guess it has been a long time since my last post. When I last posted we were on our way to Florida for the holidays. Weather was excellent for our visit. Sadly, we were all sick during Christmas week and spent most of our time indoors! It was still a good visit. I managed to get all but 300 or so of my Flickr account photos moved before their free account freezing and deleting. I had to leave 2 trips worth of photos behind there due to the way I had saved/formatted the albums making it too hard to reconstruct elsewhere. Fingers crossed the photos left behind stay there!
It has been a busy last 2 days. On the 11th, we flew from RDU to LAX. It started badly with us first breaking the handle off one of the suitcases getting them out to the street, then realizing half way to the airport that neither of us had shut the living room drapes! We had to go back and start over. In good news though we managed to successfully have the house's water supply line from the meter replaced in a little over a half day on the 9th. So, it looks like we finally have our pesky leak problem solved but we shut off the water anyway before we left. Because the hall bath faucet that got broken searching for the leak, and which we replaced ourselves, has itself sprung a leak! And around it goes. We'll deal with that when we get home in April!
We paid AA about $950 for the 2 of us to fly one way to LAX. Thank goodness for that because it was just about tolerable but as it was an overbooked flight, I was glad to have the space and quiet of first class. It was still a long almost 6 hours. We watched movies on our seat back on demand video systems and they served us a meal that we'd pre-selected online. Clay had chicken and salmon and I had fruit & cheese. Clay had red wine and I had prosecco. The meal came with an appetizer of mixed hot nuts. It was a rather turbulent flight and I was happy to land. Once at LAX, it took about an hour to get out of the airport. They changed our baggage carousel which may have accounted for some of the delay. The rest of it was waiting for the Execucar private transfer that Clay had booked in advance online for about $60. I still don't know what that delay was about. We wound up downtown in the Sheraton Grand about 2 hours after we landed. We stayed here once before and loved the central location. We booked it online for just under $560 for 2 nights, but they've charged our Discover card $677.88 since we arrived so I guess somebody has some explaining to do. We'll see.
After we got checked in and our luggage stowed, we walked a few blocks to Astro Doughnuts & Fried Chicken. There is a small fridge in our room along with a coffee/tea making station. I thought we were going to get breakfast for Saturday, but Clay also got fried chicken. We got there more than an hour before closing at 9pm and they had fewer than a dozen doughnuts left! They had no chicken ready, so we sat and waited about 20 minutes for fresh fried to order. I guess that was better than old and stale. We had our doubts about the remainder doughnuts but they were good this morning. My favorite was the square PB&J one.
The room, 1006, was quiet and the bed was very cushy both top and bottom. I don't know if it was the stress of a flight day or what but we both slept well. I was up first at 6:13am. I didn't realize Clay had a digital clock on his side until I got up to check the time. That was earlier than we'd planned to wake, but too close to go back to sleep. It meant no rushing anyway.
The Sheraton Grand must be directly over the 7th St. Metro Center. I think it is a convergence of 3 different metro train lines. Very convenient. We wandered to find the entrance as Clay trusted his Google Map app over my looking out the window or around the hotel lobby. We had allowed plenty of time for error anyway. We bought TAP cards with our 1 way fare on for $2 deposit + $1.75 fare each. The $2 deposit is non-refundable! Anyway, it was still cheap and efficient transportation. We had a walk of several blocks on the other end of the ride. I guess I haven't said what we were doing today! We had booked online an Architecture Tour. We were looking for something easy, interesting and new for us accessible on public transit when I thought about Frank Lloyd Wright houses in LA. Googling found the tours and a query found that the FLW tour today was sold out. Laura though suggested the Hollywood tour as a substitute and it was a good choice. It began at Barnsdall Park and the Hollyhock House which was where the Lloyd Wrights began their time in California. We learned and saw a lot we hadn't seen or known before and got a refresher on some that we had. It was a great way to spend a rainy morning riding around in a van. We turned out to be in the van for the heaviest part of the rain. It was clearer before and after. Lucky. (Which reminds me to talk about the baptism of my Vera Bradley rain poncho! It works great which is a good thing since I didn't bring any other waterproof gear! It was my Christmas gift/ACL/Savannah souvenir.) After the tour, on our return to our meeting place at Barnsdall Park, we paid $7 each to tour the Hollyhock House. We were glad it was available. After that I suggested lunch. We first thought we'd pay an extra fare to ride a couple of Red Line stops further out to Musso & Frank. Laura had pointed it out and I'd eaten there before without Clay. As we walked back to the Metro stop, Clay wondered aloud if Papillon in Little Armenia would be a more tasty choice. We both agreed it would and backtracked across the park for Hollywood Blvd. It was definitely a more unique choice and we shared savory and sweet fried dough specialties. Clay described it aptly as fair food. They were all served piping hot and all were delicious. We shared 3 savory perashki, with one each of meat, potato and cheese. Followed by 2 sweet ponchik with one each of dulce de leche and Nutella and Oreo. They were all delicious. Clay asked but I couldn't name a favorite. It was an interesting and perfectly portioned lunch for us. We had originally planned to skip lunch and have dinner near the Sheraton at Mas Malo, but as I typed this Clay double checked our original research and found it permanently closed, so dinner plans are open right now as he starts over looking for another close by Mexican food place. We'll see! We wound up at El Cholo. We should have made a reservation, but instead wound up among a thousand hockey fans have a pre-game dinner out. It was good, I don't know if it was worth the 30+ minute wait though. Tomorrow morning we plan to return to the Original Pantry for breakfast before checking out. Crystal Cruises is providing a private car transfer to the San Pedro World Cruise Terminal at 11am tomorrow as part of our World Cruise. Then a new adventure begins!
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