Annie Visits LA

Written By: Dan

I've accumulated a good number of frequent flier miles with all this travel lately.  I cashed in some US Airways miles to fly Annie out with me on this business trip to LA.  Annie landed a few days after I got into town.  We had a blast.   It was a short visit, but we made the most of it.

We started Friday off with breakfast in Hermosa Beach.  Followed by a Venice Beach boardwalk afternoon stroll.  We walked by Kevin's apartment.  After finding our way back to our car (and $60 parking ticket) we headed to the Santa Monica promenade for a giant Margarita and then we went to Manhattan Beach to visit Mama D's.  Mama D's makes my favorite dish in all of LA - Spaghetti with pink sauce, and meatballs the size of grapefruits.

We finished our beach bum tour at the Redondo Beach Pier.  With us at the Pier this night was Kevin, Dennis, Lisa, Paul, Allie, Megan, and Brian.  A good sized group, and fun people.  We did all the usual festivities: Beer and live music to warm up, terrorizing the carnival workers (two drunken Tilt-A-Whirl rides), and drinks at Tony's to finish off the night (no Oyster shooters this time).

Our Saturday started off with a hike to the Rancho Palace Verdes tide pools with Dennis and Lisa.  According to Dennis, the trick is to time your arrival to the pools just right.  If not, you just see the beach.  Well, we were in luck.  The tide was out, leaving the ocean floor exposed.  Pools of water between the rocks gave visitors a special interaction with the sea life.  Crabs, starfish, sea urchants sea anemones, and other odd animals were trapped in the pools while the tide was out.  This made for a great time.  The four of us risked life and limb to traverse across a cave to find a blow hole.    Once there we got a show.  See the video below.


After cleaning up, we hit up the town.  Annie had yet to see Downtown LA.  And boy did we ever.  We went to dinner at this place downtown that served only sausages, fries, and beer.  This place was popular.  We waited for 45 minutes in line to get in.  But once we did, it was worth it.  Inside were long picnic tables, family style seating, and a lot of great beers.  If this is what Octoberfest is like, sign me up.

We ended up the night at the Edison.  It is the old Edison Electric building that used to power LA.  Now they have bronzed the equipment, and made a bar out of it.  The bar stretched three stories under the building, sprawling through old equipment, bars, and even the old style light bulbs!

Mid morning Sunday Annie was back on her way back home.  I followed a few hours later.  We were exhausted.  We fit a lot of places into a few days.  Thanks to Dennis and Lisa for their great hospitality.