North America USA

Fulfilling Childhood Dreams in Los Angeles

I don’t usually blog about places in North America. I live here, so it doesn’t seem very exotic, but this time i thought: Los Angeles is blog worthy. It’s not Ethiopia, but it still has much to see. So i cranked up a few choice songs from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and set out to explore.

I am here visiting my sister, D, who moved here from Miami Beach a few years ago. This is not the first time i have come here to visit, but it is the first time i have been here for more than a long weekend and the first time i have had days entirely on my own – on foot – to wander without aim, as is my preference.

As much as Los Angeles doesn’t seem exciting it was the first and only proper vacation (as in: air travel required) we took as a family. I was 11 and we went to Disneyland and Hollywood and it was the highlight of my young life. There is still the memory of that childhood delight in seeing the landmarks, even if i no longer have a desire to stand in celebrity cement footprints and shop for plastic souvenirs.

More recent trips have involved drives down the coast, walks down Venice Beach, and cocktails at the Formosa.

This trip does have something of a purpose. D and i, both horror and Halloween fans, are centering many of activities around that theme. So far there has been horror movies and browsing in the sort of amazing year-round Halloween stores that could only exist in Los Angeles (or more particularly, Burbank.)

One of the highlights of this trip happened yesterday when we attended a screening of one of our favourite child movies: The Monster Squad. This was ordinary screening, mind you. This was an event. A screening at the stunning United Artists theatre, which feels like a cross between a gothic cathedral and a haunted castle.

We shelled out for the vip tickets which gave us access to a pre-show reception with many members of the cast and crew. You just don’t get to do this sort of thing in Vancouver. It was very cool to talk to people that had been in and created the movie we love so much. Everyone was so nice and generous with their time. Following the reception there was a Q&A and then the movie. It was a great experience. I also tried my first and last Twinkie (a snack featured in the movie). It was disgusting, but another once in a lifetime experience.

After that, still giddy, we had a cigar and coffee at a cafe on Broadway in the glorious 100 degree heat before driving to Pasadena for dinner.

It was a great day that satisfied both childhood and adult me.

Tags: California Halloween horror LA Los Angeles North America Travel USA

USA

24 Hours in California: Palm Springs

My sister lives in the Los Angeles area, meaning that she is a short, direct flight away from Vancouver. As close as she is, I don’t get down there often enough. The reason isn’t a lack of interest. I like the region, and I like her, but I am hesitant to spend my limited vacation days to visit the US. And it’s not like it’s cheap for me to visit the United States. But this changed a little when we got a budget airline flying between YVR and LAX: Flair Airlines. The Ryan Air of North America. I think it is great for short trips; it’s super cheap provided you don’t need any extras. So I decided to go to southern California for 24 hours one weekend in April. Serious sister time and no vacation days used. Win. Win.

I asked my sister, Dawn, what she wanted to do, and she said she felt like driving to Palm Springs. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we could do this on such a short trip, but then I am someone who doesn’t drive. She does drive and assures me it would be no problem.

She picked me up at the airport at about 10:20am and we hit the road. Dawn, her dog Bear (a hearty whoodle), and me. It was a beautiful day as we zoomed out of the confines of Los Angeles and onto the desert. I was looking forward to Palm Springs, but even more, I was excited to make a stop at a quintessential California roadside attraction: The Cabazon Dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs!

Dawn and I are big Pee Wee Herman fans (I even have a Pee Wee Herman inspired tattoo) and if you have seen “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” you know the Cabazon Dinosaurs. It’s where Pee Wee and the melancholy and wistful Simone go to talk before her crazy boyfriend shows up and chases Pee Wee around the dinosaurs. It is a real place, and you can visit it, just outside of LA.

In the 1960s, Claude Bell, a theme park artist and sculptor started creating a giant Brontosaurus. It was completed in 1975. It stands 45 feet tall and 150 feet long. A companion Tyrannosaurus Rex was completed in the 1980s. Bell died in 1988, but his legacy lives on.

You can stop and see these two giant dinos for free, but if you pay $15, you can go into small but fun dino park, where lots of other dinosaurs are on display. Admission also lets you climb int the T-Rex’s mouth. It was well worth the money, I say as a certified dinosaur dork. I took a ton of pictures and had a great time.

Our hearts full of joy, we carried on to Palm Springs.

Palm Springs

I had been curious about Palm Springs for a long time; not because I am a retired golfer, but because I love Frank Sinatra (another tattoo I have is of old blue eyes’ mug shot) and the Rat Pack era, and I have a fondness for mid-century design and architecture. It would have been nice to stay overnight, but this was a great intro.

Palm Springs just feels like it is from the 1950s. It has a smallish population of 44,000. Low slung buildings along a modest main street in front of a backdrop of dry rocky hills, dotted with cacti. No high rises. Lots of gorgeous mid-century houses. A design oasis. It is charming in a particular way that appeals to me.

Palm Springs has been settled for about 2000 years, due to the presence of hot springs in the desert, but it became trendy in the early 1900s when they started building small resorts and soon it was popular as a place for Hollywood types to have homes, including Sinatra, Bob Hope, and Bing Crosby. (I mean, who knows? Maybe it was trendy 2,000 years ago too.)

Other than visiting the art gallery and making a pilgrimage to Frank Sinatra’s house, I feel like I saw the city. It is small. A wander down the main street to pop into cute little shops and browse some of the excellent vintage and antique shops was a highlight. We had a good Mexican lunch and drove around ogling houses. I wouldn’t want to own one of these houses, but I would love to befriend someone who does. I can imagine smoking cigars by their backyard pools.

Speaking of cigars, there is a decent cigar shop, called “Fame” on the main drag and you can sit out front and have a cigar, but that is about it for smoking. Palm Springs is not a smoking friendly town.

I want to go back to Palm Springs and spend the night to do things I missed and take in a hike on one of the trails. But that would be for another time. We were headed west to Burbank.

Burbank and Heading Home

My sister moved from Hollywood to Burbank several years ago. Burbank gets made fun of a lot for being boring or whatever, but I kind of like it. It’s just a short drive to LA and it has a small city feel and, like Palm Springs, kind of feels like it is from another era.

We wandered downtown and had a bite to eat, taking in some street musicians before heading to bed. It was difficult to believe that I had only been in California for less than 12 hours.

The next morning, we got up around 4:30am (we’re both unstoppable morning people) and went for a walk, taking in the perfectly manicured residential streets and towering palms.

It was time to head back to the airport, but first a quick stop in Venice for breakfast and short walk on the beach. I was back in enough time to hang out at the airport lounge before boarding. I was back in Vancouver midday.

Santa Monica & Venice Beach

Do I wish I could have spent longer in California? Not really. It’s not going anywhere, and I like that I can go down again for an intense 24-hour sister visit. Plus, in about two weeks I would be off to Europe; Spain, Andorra, Lithuania, Latvia, and Sweden.

North America USA Zimbabwe-Zambia 2023

In Heaven at the TWA Flight Centre

I booked a trip to Zimbabwe. Not just Zimbabwe also Zambia and Botswana, but that’s not really the point. The point is I flew to Harare, Zimbabwe. A long flight: Vancouver to New York; New York to Nairobi; Nairobi to Harare. It was nearly two days of travel and none of the layovers were long enough where I could leave the airport and go visit the cities, so I had braced myself for gruelling days of travel. My layover in New York was only about six hours so I looked for things to do within the airport, apart from the lounges. And that’s where I discovered the TWA terminal at JFK airport.

The TWA terminal, AKA the TWA Flight Center, AKA the Trans World Flight Center was built between 1959-1962 to be the terminal for Trans World Airlines. It was designed by architect and designer Eero Saarinen in the 1950s. By the time it was completed, it was virtually obsolete. Traffic had increased to JFK so much that the terminal wasn’t really functional anymore. But the terminal was preserved and in 2019 a hotel was opened in it. The terminal itself is otherwise preserved just as it was, in all of its glory.

I didn’t know what to expect. I just read that there was a hotel and a cafe or restaurant in this 1950s sixties designed airport terminal. And that was enough for me. I took the elevator up to the appropriate floor and when the door opened I think I actually gasped audibly staring ahead of you is this long tunnel with white round walls and bright red carpeting that leads you into the terminal immediately you look like you’re in some sort of 1960s vision of the future. It’s incredible.

*entering the past’s version of the future*

The terminal’s design is neo futurism. Minimal and clean. Everything is white or red. All the chairs are the gracefully simple Saarinen tulip chairs. Everything has round edges. It’s cool. It is both futuristic and retro at the same time. It’s the encapsulation of everything that the height of glamorous air travel represented.

I was in heaven. The decor was impeccable and they were playing the best music: Frank Sinatra and the like. I wandered around and took in the decor and took a few photos of displays they had of random, period-appropriate things like a hair salon and a twister room. There was a display of all the uniforms of TWA stewardesses over the years (fascinating). And there was both a cafe and restaurant. I settled into the restaurant and had a cup of black coffee and a slice of avocado toast. The only thing missing was an ashtray.

There is also a TWA shop in the terminal where you can buy TWA branded merchandise. Mercifully the store was closed when I was there at my early hour, which is good, because gazing through the window, I wanted basically everything inside. Just outside the store is a free photo booth where you can take fun photos and have them printed. Did I do it? Of course I did.

*don’t judge my appearance. I hadn’t slept or showered in over 24 hours*

I do have a predilection for this era of time: the design, the clothing, the music, the unrepentant smoking…so it was guaranteed that I was going to enjoy the TWA Flight Centre; However, even if you don’t love these things, it’s worth a visit. There is a lot of space with seating, views outside, and little nooks tucked away where one could sit and have a nap or just while away some time in between flights, even without spending any money. It is maybe my favourite airport feature I’ve experienced.

It was an excellent way to kill some time during my layover. I find myself now wanting to have another layover there just so that I can visit the terminal again. Next time, I might stay at the hotel, or if it’s in the evening, I would visit the bar. Oh, didn’t I mention? There is a 1958 Lockheed Constellation airplane parked outside that you access through another tunnel and the plane has been turned into a cocktail bar – The Connie Cocktail Lounge. It looks incredible. Next time: martinis. This time, it was a morning visit and on to Harare, Zimbabwe.

Central America / Caribbean Guatemala North America

The Ruins at Tikal

I had gone to Guatemala for a week or so of work and was flying home on a Sunday, which meant I had one Saturday to do with as I pleased. There was no way I was leaving Guatemala without seeing the Mayan complex of Tikal. Guatemala has a wealth of beautiful sights to choose from and I knew I was only going to see Antigua and Tikal. The photos of Tikal have always looked so mystical: tall pyramids rising out of the jungle. I love that stuff (who doesn’t?) whether it is Machu Pichu or Abu Simbel, or Tikal, there is the allure of a lost civilization leaving exquisite remnants and just a bit of a feeling like you are Indiana Jones. It’s irresistible.

So I was determined to make it work.

I don’t recommend going from Antigua or even Guatemala City to Tikal for the day. It is a long day and while I was happy with the time I spent at Tikal, it meant not getting to spend any time in the delightful looking town of Flores, which is the gateway to Tikal. But it IS possible to do it as a day trip if you have transportation at both ends of the flight to Tikal and don’t mind starting at about 2:30am. The logistics of handling the transportation on my own seemed daunting, so I just booked a day tour, which I felt was the best option.

I was picked up and driven to Guatemala City where we gathered the others, maybe 8 of us in total. We flew in a small twin propellor plane for about an hour to Flores where we were picked up by our guide and driven to the Tikal national park.

Tikal was built between about 200 and 900 AD by the Mayans (although the site of Tikal was settled about 1000 years prior) but it was not discovered, covered by jungle, until the 1840s. It seems impossible that it could go unnoticed for so long, but even now, some of the temples are still covered by vegetation and it was only when our guide pointed them out that we knew they were there. They just looked like green hills.

It was great, walking through the trees, monkeys overhead, and then seeing a pyramid peak peeking out above the trees, or entering a clearing with one just sitting there. It was lovely. And we got to climb up many of them, which I always like, even if sometimes that seems like a better idea going up than coming down.

I don’t feel like I learned a lot on this tour about the civilization itself, but I was very happy to have a guide take us around and the people on the tour were all nice and good company. That said, no one in the group had seen the very enjoyable horror movie “The Ruins”, which was so clearly on point; it was disappointing.

(“The Ruins” is good travel horror movie where a bunch of young backpackers visit a pyramid in the middle of the jungle in Central America, only to find that the vines covering the pyramid are sentient and sacrificing the humans that invade the pyramid. I mean, come on, it’s the same thing. They may as well be selling DVDs of it at the Tikal gift shop. [There is no Tikal gift shop.]) I feel like often obvious horror movie references go unappreciated in places around the world. Like the Paris catacombs and “As Above So Below”, or the Amazon and “Cannibal Holocaust”, or the Australian outback and “Wolf Creek”, or any hostel in Eastern Europe and…”Hostel”. I could go on, but won’t.) It’s almost like other adults don’t spend all their free time at home watching trash.

Horror movie digression aside, Tikal did not disappoint. It was incredible. I would say that it was a little less impressive than Machu Pichu or Abu Simbel. Better than Teohuacan. Maybe similar in enjoyment to Borobodour. But there is not requirement to rank these places. This isn’t that kind of blog. All these places are wonderful and worth seeing.

Tikal was great. I’m glad I went. It was the perfect way to end my time in Guatemala.

Wandering North

Fulfilling Childhood Dreams in Los Angeles

Leave a Reply

Share this:

Related Posts

Dinosaurs!

Palm Springs

Burbank and Heading Home

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Leave a Reply