We've just returned from a blitzkrieg visit to our old stomping grounds, Los Angeles. Arriving just past midnight on Friday, we had four days in which to cram everything before leaving in the early morning hours of Tuesday. And we did!
Getting there was half the fun, as they say. The bus trip to Guadalajara Airport was an adventure, of course. The bus ride is long (5 - 6 hours) and goes by way of Guanajuato, Leon, and Lagos de Moreno to the city of Guadalajara. I think we saw three movies on the trip. Luckily, we brought turkey-bacon sandwiches to supplement the apple/cookie/water provided by the bus line.
Once there we were getting into the taxi that would take us from the bus station to the airport when Michael realized that he had left his passport on the bus. A quick run back to the bus arrival spot had to be repeated when they wanted to see his ticket before letting him in (I had the tickets), then the bus had left the arrival section.
During this time I was trying to explain to the taxi driver in my fractured Spanish just why we couldn't leave yet. When Michael eventually returned to the taxi the second time, it was with an employee from the station in tow.
We had to follow the bus! A movie began playing in my head showing us following the bus back to SMA, honking to stop it all the way!
As it turned out, we only had to follow the bus to the cleaning location, a few blocks from the Estacion, and the passport was retrieved. Once we returned the employee to the main bus station, we were on our way to the airport, which was luckily closer than we had thought it to be. We made it to the airport in a timely fashion and generous tips all around.
Once we made it to Glendora (the shuttle took some doing to summon to the airport), our Friday included a few hours of sleep and visits to our favorite barber in Hollywood and the Burbank IKEA for a few necessities before heading to Pasadena for the retirement luncheon for my Director in the Superior Court's Training Division (my penultimate assignment with the court) which was the announced purpose of the whole weekend trip.
Afterwards we visited the new Target store in Azusa (no, we did not buy any toilet-tank workings) before picking up our hostess (who had kindly lent us the use of her car for the day) and driving to Silverlake for dinner at our old Friday night favorite, Casita del Campo.
Founded by one of the Jets dancers (Rudy del Campo) in the West Side Story movie in the 60s, it has been going strong ever since. It was great to see the host, Jay, again, as well as Fernando, the bartender, and Alex, our fave waiter. Probably had too much tequilla as I can remember everything except eating the meal itself.... (The drive home was a bit hazy, too - luckily I was a passenger, not the driver.)
Saturday began by lazing around the house and visiting a friend in the community in which we earlier lived until it was time to go to Costco for our eye exams in Canoga Park and then dinner at our midweek Mexican restaurant, Los Toros, in Chatsworth. (We covered a lot of ground on this trip, as you can tell, but didn't manage to see everyone.) Great margaritas! We ordered our Margaritas by name tequillas - Casa Noble and Pertida - labels which we have not yet found here in Mexico. Pity! They're awfully good....
Sunday we were off to Disneyland for dinner at the Club with our friend. We stayed at the Disney Paradise Pier hotel for the last couple of days so we had use of the room for changing before dinner - and it's a good thing we did: it rained Sunday and we needed dry clothes and the hair dryer.
We did manage to visit a few attractions that were 1) inside (Soarin' Over California, Midway Mania, and The Haunted Mansion) and 2) had fairly short wait times. The rain had begun Saturday, but we dodged most of the wetness that day. Sunday we took our umbrellas with us and slogged around the parks. There was tremendous storming during the night, including lightning around 4 am that awakened us.
For dinner, we all three chose the Chef's Choice which was a great deal like the Vintner's Dinner except with a few more courses laid on. We did this with the appropriate wine parings, of course, and Louis as our server.
Chef's Choice Menu: An Amuse Bouche; Chicken Breast au jus on a Fried Green Tomato; Lobster Newburg on Risotto with Mascarpone (I had Salmon Newburg); Watermelon Sorbet scooped into a mini-ice cream cone; Shortribs in a red-wine reduction and Broccoli Froth with Scalloped Potatoes and Baby Green Beans; a Cheese Platter of Gorgonzola and Camembert with Apricot Chutney; Dessert was a Creme Brulee, a Chocolate-mint pot de creme, a Chocolate Mousse Bombe, and Apple Brown Betty all served with creme Anglaise and whipped cream.
But Monday dawned bright and clear and we ventured into the parks before lunch at the Club without our umbrellas. Who wants to be burdened carrying umbrellas everywhere? We should have!
While visiting with our cast member friend who manages some of the food and wine locations in California Adventure it began raining again - in earnest. Michael headed back to the hotel to fetch the umbrellas while I zipped next door to see the Blue Sky preview house showing the plans for the redesigned CAdventure so as to stay dry.
I was eventually scooted out the exit door into the downpour and found the front door to the exhibit closed to re-entry, so went wandering - looking for a drier spot in which to wait for Michael's return.
Michael was delayed when he found there had been difficulties with the complimentary tickets for our friends joining us for lunch, so I decided to walk back to the hotel looking for him, but missed Michael in our travels. We eventually connected in the lobby of the Grand Californian hotel and things were back on track again.
A fun lunch - it's a buffet of salads, seafood, and desserts with a wonderful cream of potato soup that day with the entree ordered from the menu - was had by all and then back out into the park - this time a bit drier than earlier. During the afternoon, Michael went to the spa and I took a nap to recover some of the missing sleep. We were both refreshed! We had dinner at the Plaza Inn (great fried chicken) and returned to the hotel to pack and wait for the arrival of the Super Shuttle to the airport - a somewhat scary ride. Why don't they get newer vans with better suspension systems? Maybe we'll try Prime Time Shuttle on our next visit.
Once back in Guadalajara, a quick taxi trip delivered us to the Central Estacion de Autobuses on time. The timing had been questionable, but we didn't need to wait for the next bus on ETN (an additional 2-hour wait) and the long ride to San Miguel via Leon and Guanajuato began. At least we didn't stop in Lagos de Moreno, though we'd seen one of the movies previously.
We did make it home in time for dinner and to be reunited with our dogs, who seemed glad to see us (though we know they enjoy their pet B&B, too).
We enjoyed sleeping with all four dogs on the bed and with the door to the terrace open so as to enjoy the cool night air (even with a dive-bombing mosquito).
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Taking Aim at a Target
Mexico takes some getting used to. Yes, I know it's a foreign country, even if it is just next door to the US. As Michael asks me when I'm complaining about something not working the way I think it should: "And what country do we live in?"
Take grocery shopping. Our kitchen is smallish so we can't always stock up on items - there's only so much storage available. And we know that shopping in Mexico is like shopping at Costco: If you see something you like, buy it now; it may be gone if you wait until your next shopping trip.
So this week I plan out a week's menus and make a grocery list for the items we need. Many bell peppers are required - mostly the red ones (more expensive than the usual green color). We drive to Mega on a Wednesday - Sale Day for fruits and vegetables. Right inside the door we walk into the produce section only to find that they have lots of bell peppers in three colors: red, orange, and green. And the red peppers are the least expensive. Bingo!
Later we walk through the canned goods aisles looking for the cans of tomatoes that are needed for the recipes. Four of the five recipes called for canned tomatoes in some incarnation: diced, diced with onions & garlic, stewed, whole, et cetera.
The aisle with the canned tomatoes has only tomato sauces and purees. You've never seen so many cans and boxes of sauces and purees. If nothing else, the grocery staff know how to fill empty shelves with what's available so that it looks plentious.
Luckily, we did have a couple of cans of diced tomatoes with garlic/onions at home so we were able to make the lentil soup, but scratch the rest of the week's menus. No curry, no chicken saute, no salsa, no Scandinavian veggie stew, no Cuban beans. Time to freeze all the chicken, I guess.
I guess that's what restaurants are for, eh?
Another thing that took some getting used to was the toilets down here. No, this isn't rural Italy in the 60s, when some hotels still had bathrooms with a hole in the floor and a roll of what passed as tissue. We have 'real' bathrooms with running water and everything. We even installed whole-house purified water so we could brush our teeth in any bathroom without worrying about catching a dreaded disease.
We live in a working class neighborhood (a colonia) but it's not in the historic center of town, so we don't have a small wastebasket next to each toilet to receive the used toilet tissue. Our drains are large enough to flush all that away.
It's the flushing that gets me. For some reason, Mexican toilets only flush when you hold the handle down. Now this seems obvious, but in the states you depress the handle and release it - walk away - the toilet follows through. Here, you depress the handle and must hold it until the toilet does its job. If you release it too soon, it stops flushing.
This took some getting used to, but it eventually became second nature. However, six months later when I was in San Diego for a while, the depress/release took me by surprise each time for the first few days. I suppose it's not the toilet itself, it's the flushing mechanism inside the tank that determines how it works, but that part of the design is missing here. Perhaps we'll buy some replacements for the innards and bring them back with us on our next visit. It will give Pedro something to do around the house.
I'm not even going to consider installing the pressurized tank toilets that our Home Depot carries. Just not sure we have the water pressure to fill them. We use tinacos and gravity for our water pressure here.
Of course, we could buy those toilet tank replacement kits at our nearby Target, if only we had one. One of my most keenly felt losses was Target. In the San Fernando Valley we lived surrounded by at least five Target stores. If one store was out of something you could find it nearby. Sunday mornings' routine involved drinking the morning cup of coffee while perusing the newest Target ad on the computer to see what the latest thing I didn't know I needed was. And while Costco, Sams Club, Sears, Home Depot, WalMart and other stores have made the transition across the border, Target remains firmly NOB. I'm hoping I live to see a Target store within 30 - 40 miles of SMA; then I could die happy.
Take grocery shopping. Our kitchen is smallish so we can't always stock up on items - there's only so much storage available. And we know that shopping in Mexico is like shopping at Costco: If you see something you like, buy it now; it may be gone if you wait until your next shopping trip.
So this week I plan out a week's menus and make a grocery list for the items we need. Many bell peppers are required - mostly the red ones (more expensive than the usual green color). We drive to Mega on a Wednesday - Sale Day for fruits and vegetables. Right inside the door we walk into the produce section only to find that they have lots of bell peppers in three colors: red, orange, and green. And the red peppers are the least expensive. Bingo!
Later we walk through the canned goods aisles looking for the cans of tomatoes that are needed for the recipes. Four of the five recipes called for canned tomatoes in some incarnation: diced, diced with onions & garlic, stewed, whole, et cetera.
The aisle with the canned tomatoes has only tomato sauces and purees. You've never seen so many cans and boxes of sauces and purees. If nothing else, the grocery staff know how to fill empty shelves with what's available so that it looks plentious.
Luckily, we did have a couple of cans of diced tomatoes with garlic/onions at home so we were able to make the lentil soup, but scratch the rest of the week's menus. No curry, no chicken saute, no salsa, no Scandinavian veggie stew, no Cuban beans. Time to freeze all the chicken, I guess.
I guess that's what restaurants are for, eh?
Another thing that took some getting used to was the toilets down here. No, this isn't rural Italy in the 60s, when some hotels still had bathrooms with a hole in the floor and a roll of what passed as tissue. We have 'real' bathrooms with running water and everything. We even installed whole-house purified water so we could brush our teeth in any bathroom without worrying about catching a dreaded disease.
We live in a working class neighborhood (a colonia) but it's not in the historic center of town, so we don't have a small wastebasket next to each toilet to receive the used toilet tissue. Our drains are large enough to flush all that away.
It's the flushing that gets me. For some reason, Mexican toilets only flush when you hold the handle down. Now this seems obvious, but in the states you depress the handle and release it - walk away - the toilet follows through. Here, you depress the handle and must hold it until the toilet does its job. If you release it too soon, it stops flushing.
This took some getting used to, but it eventually became second nature. However, six months later when I was in San Diego for a while, the depress/release took me by surprise each time for the first few days. I suppose it's not the toilet itself, it's the flushing mechanism inside the tank that determines how it works, but that part of the design is missing here. Perhaps we'll buy some replacements for the innards and bring them back with us on our next visit. It will give Pedro something to do around the house.
I'm not even going to consider installing the pressurized tank toilets that our Home Depot carries. Just not sure we have the water pressure to fill them. We use tinacos and gravity for our water pressure here.
Of course, we could buy those toilet tank replacement kits at our nearby Target, if only we had one. One of my most keenly felt losses was Target. In the San Fernando Valley we lived surrounded by at least five Target stores. If one store was out of something you could find it nearby. Sunday mornings' routine involved drinking the morning cup of coffee while perusing the newest Target ad on the computer to see what the latest thing I didn't know I needed was. And while Costco, Sams Club, Sears, Home Depot, WalMart and other stores have made the transition across the border, Target remains firmly NOB. I'm hoping I live to see a Target store within 30 - 40 miles of SMA; then I could die happy.
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