A month ago I decided that we had to get out of cold Chicago for a weekend. The first weekend in March seemed like the best time to go. Unfortunately, no one told me that flying out on March 1 was going to be awful. We landed in Long Beach at 2AM PST & got to the hotel at 2:30. That was six hours late, which I think is a personal record. I think I'm going to get something from Jet Blue, but it wasn't their fault. When we got into our room, we saw this waiting for us:
There was a thank you card by the cheese, we weren't sure why they left it for us. We tried some on Friday, it was good cheese. We had to put it out in hall to get the staff to take the cheese away. They left the half eaten cheese when they cleaned the room.
The office building across the street appeared to only have valet parking.
I asked noted world traveler Pauly for a restaurant recommendation and he came up with Crustacean in Beverly Hills. It is a Vietnamese fusion restaurant that, not surprisingly, specializes in seafood. It was excellent. I had a roasted Dungeness crab that was super. Jonnell had beef short ribs that were great as well. The place was too nice for me to feel comfortable taking pictures of the food. The restaurant's showpiece is their aquarium floor that weaves a narrow path through the restaurant. It's worth coming by there for a drink just to see it.
Friday we went to John O'Groat's for breakfast by Century City. Pauly had said how much he liked the place on his blog (along with some other people) & it was only a mile from our hotel. One funny thing I noticed about the place was they made everyone wait before they were seated even though there were a number of empty tables. Other than that little thing, it's a great place for breakfast. I had a scramble with turkey chorizo & diced jalapeños that was very good. They have great biscuits, too.
We went over to Santa Monica and we saw a cool recycling theme on the wall of an apartment building:
On Saturday, we went out to Santa Anita to play the ponies. At least I played the ponies, Jonnell was content to read magazines and sit out in the nice weather, which I really appreciated since we were there for around 5 hours. I had never been there before, it's a really beautiful location for a racetrack.
To me it seemed like the track hadn't been modernized much in the last 20 years. I liked the old toteboard that they still use.
I only cashed two tickets all day. But since one of them was a $146 exacta (see race 7) I ended up a couple dollars ahead. And they were giving away jockey lamps, which was a great bonus.
At some point in my life I need to live somewhere warm. We had 4 days of perfect weather in California. When we got back to Chicago it was 13. I am getting too old for this. Well, not really, but I never have liked cold weather. All I need to do is figure out to get a job in a city I've never lived in before and only know like two people.
Sadly, I only made it to the Parking Lot of Santa Anita when I was on the coast years ago (they were racing at Hollywood at the time).
The jockey lamp sounds impressive, though. How about a pic of THAT on the blog, Matt?
Posted by: Rob H | April 06, 2007 at 01:48 PM