Arizona 2020, Saturday, March 7, 2020

Morning in North Hollywood is like morning in Tucson or morning in Anthem; mild and sunshine.  We lazed in a for a while, recovering from the night before, but were up and drinking coffee by 8:00. As today is our final travel day, Deb and I showered and packed our bags. Meg took Addison the dog for her morning walk and Ed showered and cleaned up.  By 10:30, we loaded up the car and headed out for our day’s adventures.

We started at Porto’s Cafe and Pastry, a legendary shop in Burbank.  Nothing like this exists in our fair city.  Bread, pastries and cakes as far as the eye can see. Queue tapes set up and people standing in line to order their coffee, pastry and sandwiches then to a table for delivery. Separate lines for whole cakes only!  Our wait to order at the counter was only 15-20 minutes.  By the time we left around noon, the lines were out the door and down the block.  We are told it is like this all day on the weekends, and similar in the mornings during the week. The baked goods on offer were amazing.  We had some danish, a Cubano Sandwich (as the founder/ownership family emigrated from Cuba,) an egg omelette and cheese sandwich on a croissant, and seven of their famous “potato balls,” these being a spiced ground beef center with some veggies, surrounded by a layer of mashed potato, then breaded, and deep fried. An amazing and tasty two inch diameter treat.

We then journeyed next door to the Rocket Fizz store, filled with unusual bottled soda pop and all the candies and sundry sweets from our youth - Beecham’s and Black Jack chewing gum, circus peanuts, BB Bats candies, wax lips, etc.  Purchases were made.

From there we headed to Descanso Botanical Gardens, a 126acre site in the Pasadena area that was crafted from a former estate.A pleasure to find that our Nebraska Arboretum Membership was reciprocal, so no entry charge for Deb and I.  Ed and Meg enjoyed themselves so much that they bought a membership for future trips, thereby recovering their entry fee.  We wandered the gardens for two hours, enjoying especially the camellia gardens started by original owner E.M. Boddy and enlarged significantly by the purchase in 1942 of two large Japanese American nursery stocks form citizens forced to “relocation camps.” Boddy paid for the nursery stock, and enlarged his own collection, serving as the base for the current collection.  In addition there are areas of California native plants, a grove of Coastal Live Oak trees, hundreds of years old, and a sprinkling of youngish redwoods.  We saw nowhere near all of the gardens and look forward to a future visit.

Leaving the Descanso, we then headed to the Glendale-Pasadena-Burbank Airport for our final flights home.  Bidding a hug filled goodbye to Ed and Meg, we passed quickly through TSA, spent an hour nursing a glass of red wine, and then boarded our Southwest flight to Las Vegas, and eventually home to Omaha.  Darcy and Maria had dropped off our car at the airport earlier in the evening and sent us a photo of its location; we picked it up and got to parking lot check out at 12:06, and arrived att home by 12:25.  We stumbled in, bid goodnight to Harry and Sushi, and tumbled into bed.  Our trip over, we were tired, but had great memories of the friends and family we spent time with, the wonderful conversations, and all the new sights we enjoyed.  We will definitely make the Southwest a standing

destination in our future travels.

Arizona 2020, Friday, March 6, 2020

I will say, there is something rather seductive about this southwest American weather.  I’m sure after time it could become monotonous, as I love the change of season in the Midwest, but I can take a few weeks of this.  Sunny and 72F in North Hollywood this morning.  Meg is up and out for a long, full day of work, but Ed has taken the day off to be our tour guide / escort for today.

We leave a little after ten for the drive towards downtown Los Angeles and the museum district.  Ed has obtained tickets to the Broad Museum for a 12:30 entry. Eli Broad, pronounced b-r-long O-d, a mega real estate developer, together with his wife Edythe, has amassed one of the largest collections of modern art, emphasizing American artists.  They then donated this museum, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary, to the City of Los Angeles.  It is located across from the LA Museum of contemporary Art and next door to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Frank Gehry designed home of the LA Philharmonic Orchestra among other groups.

The Broad building alone is an architectural masterpiece  designed by the firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and, as we will soon learn the collection is astounding.  We arrive downtown around 11:00 and secure parking.  We then find a lovely restaurant Vespaio next door to the Broad and order lunch consisting of an arugula-roast beet-goat cheese salad topped with some slices of chicken breast, a roast beef panini on a baguette and a pastrami-cheese-coleslaw panini, also on a baguette.  All accompanied by a glass of Tuscany red wine.  Most satisfying. Then on to the Broad.

There is no way to satisfyingly describe this collection, only about a third of it currently on display.   Artists include Jeff Koons, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Basquiat, Mark Bradford, Ellen Gallagher, Mark Tansey, and many, many others. We spent over two hours here and could have spent more time.  A mandatory stop at the gift shop completed, we recovered the car from the car park and headed to our next stop.  We drove to the Hollywood Street of Stars to find the newly installed star of our favorite - Susan Stamberg of NPR fame,

then on to an afternoon cocktail at the world famous Chateau Marmont, high in the hills. We alighted at the Chateau and the valet whisked away the mud encrusted Honda Accord (Ed’s current vehicle, recently returned from their trip to Mexico - hence the dirt and mud.) We secured a spot in the lounge, not the patio as we probably were not famous enough. Ed had a concoction called “The Good, the Bad and the Hombre,” Deb had what she described as the best dirty martini in Hollywood, and I had a decent California Pinot Noir.

Our brush with the stars over, we then went out to recover the Honda.  As I looked in the garage noting all the Porches, BMWs and an antique Morgan right by the entry, I wondered out loud how they could allow a dirty Honda in the garage.  Well the answer is they didn’t.  It was parked out on the drive next to a service truck! No discount from the valet charge, though.

Next we headed on an amazing 45 minute drive up Laurel Canyon, through the Mt. Olympus subdivision, seeing these wonderful hillside homes and mansions tucked along the winding roads.  We arrive back in North Hollywood and rest up for the evenings activities.  Meg returned at 6:55 and we changed and hopped into our Lyft ride share for the trip back up into the hills to the famous Castaway-Burbank Restaurant, dubbed the best date night restaurant in the world.  The venue sits atop a mountain in Burbank, overlooking the entire San Fernando valley.

Absolutely stunning view.  We dined on wedge salads, braised short ribs, wagyu beef tenders, and wild mushroom pappardelle pasta.  The food was excellent, the cocktails generous and the wine very tasty. But the real attraction was the San Fernando Valley, laid out like shining stars thrown down to cover the valley floor. Unforgettable.

We secured another Uber ride back to North Hollywood, and tumbled into bed around 11:30, totally immersed as we were in the Southern California mystique for the day.

Arizona 2020, Thursday, March 5, 2020

This morning in Anthem breaks warm, partly cloudy and gorgeous, although the high today is expected to climb to 83F.  Today is another travel day for us so we arise, perform all the standard ablutions and pack our bags.  Breakfast is another newly uncovered Danish Kringle from the ever thinning freezer section (the theme continues) and coffee.

This morning we spend time on the patio, admiring the flora and watching the hummingbirds feed.  At some point, Dell breaks out two hummingbird feeder rings for us to try.  The idea is to fill the small red flower thimbles with sugar water and then sit very quietly with your arm outstretched.  The manufacturer claims that the hummingbirds will come right up and feed off the ring on your finger.  We believe they will work, as the tiny little fluttering jewels have been buzzing all about us the entire time we have been here.  Deb, Dell and Karen try their luck as I sit quietly in the corner, camera ready.  Unfortunately, no takers this session, although they are still flying near and drinking at the feeders directly overhead.  Maybe some time in the future, but today is not the day.

We lunch on sandwiches, hard boiled eggs and fresh strawberries, then hop in the red Taurus for the hourlong drive to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.  We bid adieu to our dear friends, planning to see them again in April when they travel north to visit their daughters and family in Kearney, Nebraska.  We breeze through TSA security and encounter no lines,  although the buzzer sounds after I pass through the metal detector. They pull me aside and ask for my cellphone after it passes through the x-ray machine.  They take it over to some other machine for a moment and then hand it back to me and send us on our way.  I later learn that it was a random check and they pushed my phone under a sniffer for explosive detection.  Not sure why this happened, but I was assured it was totally random and not to worry.  I, of course, was sure that it was probably something I had written regarding you-know-who and I was being persecuted.  Deb assured me I was being paranoid, and calmed my jitters by dragging me into the bar nearest our gate and calming me with a healthy pour of Pinot Noir. Sensible girl, that one.

Our flight was on time and 90 minutes later we were on the tarmac at Glenwood-Burbank-Pasadena Airport.  This small, two terminal airport is a throwback to another era.  I can’t remember when I have alighted from a flight in a normal sized jet to walk down a set of steps to the tarmac and walked in ground level to the gate. We stepped outside and crossed to the baggage claim, also outside but covered and collected our bags.  Our original plan as to order an Uber for the drive to Ed’s apartment in North Hollywood, but he called to say his conference was over and he would collect us.  We basked in the Southern California sunshine for 15 minutes or so and then here comes Ed, zooming up in his Honda to collect us for the 15 minute drive to his apartment.

Meg had left us a bottle of wine, some cheeses, crackers and salami along with a lovely note.  Ed changed and we spent the next few hours catching up, polishing off the wine and cheese and just gabbing.  At 7:00 we walked around the North Hollywood Arts & Entertainment district and ended up at our destination of St. Anne’s restaurant, where Meg met us.  A lovely restaurant serving “American classics with a Latin touch” and craft cocktails, with a lively action going on.  Noisy for a boomer like me to hear with all the ambient noice, but eventually it cleared a little as the bar and snack crowd dispersed.  We enjoyed a cocktail or wine and dined on some excellent food: a scratch made mac and cheese, some caci et peppe pasta, and an entree of mac and cheese wrapped in a flat waffle cake like roll topped with deep fried chicken, and, for me,  a special blend hamburger, which, topped only with aioli and a slice of tomato on a pretzel style bun, was amazingly delicious - umami filled  and succulent.

We caught an Uber the six blocks home, and then sat around talking and reminiscing.  Our time clocks are suitably messed up with the change in time zones but we tumbled into bed around 10:00 PST.  A nice quiet introduction to the Hollywood / LA area.