USA Honeymoon 2018 – Page 2

Los Angeles

14 May 2018 by evo

On Friday we pack up in Joshua Tree and make our way to LA. The Airbnb is small but good

For dinner we have booked Gwen, Curtis Stone’s meat based restaurant. It’s the first steak I’ve had in a long time and it’s amazing. The most memorable part is choosing a knife for the meal from a case presented to us just before the food comes out

On Saturday we tour around the neighbourhood we’re staying in, Silver Lake. It’s kinda he hipster/cool part of town, we’re out early and there’s no one about. We get coffee, then some vintage stores, Brite Spot diner for pancakes, and some more vintage stores. There are two markets that we visit. The mood of the whole place is warm and inviting.

In the afternoon we walk up to Griffith Observatory for the view of sprawling LA. While we’re there we watch a movie about the universe projected into a dome, as recommended by one of Anna’s workmates.

On the walk back home we stop at an Italian place for dinner and note the cinema nearby, the Los Feliz Theatre.

Sunday marks the first constraint we placed on the entire holiday, the second Sunday of the month, in LA. We set off to the Rose Bowl for the monthly markets.

The entire grounds of the Rose Bowl are filled with stalls, mostly vendors of vintage or second-hand goods. Thousands and thousands of things. Over a number of hours we make a valiant attempt to see everything. It’s overwhelming, but fun. As the weather turns from overcast to drizzle to rain the task races away from us.

Carrying a few new (to us) clothes we head back to the Los Feliz Theatre, the new Wes Anderson is showing in half an hour.

From there we head back into Silver Lake. I had been in two minds about getting a denim jacket at a thrift store yesterday and we hadn’t seen a better one, so back we go! After buying it, we happen to be half an hour’s walk from a dinner place that opens in half an hour, total no brainer. The place has come up on suggested eats lists so we walk to see how busy it is.

When we arrive, there are a couple of free tables and we’re seated straight away at a rickety table on the sloping sidewalk. Within 15 minutes people are being given hour-plus wait times.

The place is called Mh Zh, and if it’s not sounding hipster enough, the menus are written out daily on brown paper bags. Half the dishes are indecipherable and need the waitstaff to explain.

The meal is very tasty new-Israeli and cheap for how good it is

Nearby is a bar called The Thirsty Crow which feels dive-y as we walk in. There’s a guy on a guitar trashing out some tunes and joking with the crowd (who seem to be mostly his mates and his mum, it’s Mother’s Day). We settle in with a couple of whiskeys and end up chatting to the guitarist, Princess Frank. LA is feeling very cool right now

On Monday we’re planning to meet Big Soph, who happens to be holidaying in LA at the same time as us(!). We’ll get to Venice Beach for sunset to see her.

First stop is to Westlake for a pastrami sandwich at Langer’s Deli. Getting off the metro there’s an instant picture of the homeless problem in the city and we’re reasonable hounded on the short walk to the deli. I didn’t feel unsafe but felt more conscious of the people around us than in other places. Worth is though., Langer’s was awesome!

If I had regular access to this pastrami, it would be absolute end of me. It was peppery and fragrant with dill and caraway and other spices. And it truly melted apart as we chewed. Wow

From there we caught the metro into the Grand Central Market to continue the food experience. A few places caught our attention, but the original China Cafe won our patronage. We ordered the house won tons, they were excellent, but watching the frantic lunch hour rush was even more impressive

We walk around the city a bit, visiting The Last Book Shop, which is pretty cool and then the library and the modern art gallery

Then it’s back to the station for a longer train ride out to Venice Beach.

It’s nice to see the sea again after weeks in the desert. It is so so much more touristy than anywhere we’ve been so far. Out along the pier is a gift shop that normally I would totally ignore, but we’ve been buying fridge magnets throughout the holiday, and there are some particularly funny ones here

The walk from Venice to is pleasant and full of American caricatures: the muscly bros, street performers, yoga-tights-fast-walkers, electric scooters and (only one!) bikini rollerblader.

The closer to Santa Monica we get the more street vendors there are, it’s a bit much.

We meet Sophie at a rooftop bar, where she’s setup with some of her friends. It’s a funny, happy coincidence that she’s in town and we drink wines and watch the sun set over the hills. How cool is that?

We grab dinner and crash at home. It’s our last night in LA.

On Tuesday we pick up our fun rental car. In classic tourist style we’re getting a convertible mustang. Ours is yellow!

Last night we decided to meet Sophie and her friends in Malibu on our way up the coast.

Top down, yellow mustang, sun shining. It’s comically good fun.

We sit on the beach in Malibu for an hour or so and watch the surfers and paddle boarders. The coast always feels rejuvenating.

Hugs all around and we’re off to our next stop: The Madonna Inn

Los Feliz Theatre (seeing 'Isle of dogs')

Joshua Tree National Park

11 May 2018 by evo

A few more photos:

Snakes with night photography
Saw a roadrunner and found a youtube video of its mating call to bring it closer (cruel…)
Out hugging Joshua Trees
Working fashion into national park visits
And some sun rise/set shots before we leave

Joshua Tree

9 May 2018 by evo

Palm Springs was partly fun because of the suburbs and the people, in Joshua Tree we stayed on the border of the national park, on a dirt road away from anyone else. Our stay was marked by the landscape, the wildlife, and our tiny house

From the house the landscape is filled with piles of boulders, desert sand, cactus, rugged grasses, Joshua Trees, and hidden wildlife

The house is an open box, with a shower on an outside wall and a bathtub away from the house

In the mornings cotton tail rabbits and quails play around the house, during the day lizards and snakes warm themselves on rocks, in the evenings we see roadrunners calling and running about and hummingbirds hovering around flowers. At night we can hear unnerving coyote cries in the distance.

I plan to take star photos both nights, using the first night to find the Milky Way and test different scenes and the second to setup and leave the camera to take photos throughout the night.

At sunset on the first night while scope around the boulders I suddenly get a snake-feeling and looking about I see a rattlesnake about five metres away. It’s pretty exciting, but also puts me on edge for the rest of the time that I spend walking around the desert.

At night, being suitably cautious, I spot a smaller snake on my way out to a photo spot. And again, when I’m finished and walking back to bed at about 2am I see a large rattle snake coiled up directly between me and bed. There are a lot of little friends out here.

We sightsee in Joshua Tree National Park the next day, tired from a short sleep. There are parts that feel properly prehistoric, like a dinosaur could rear its head at any moment and walk through the landscape, it’s beautiful and strange. We walk a couple of different loops and clamber over boulders to get better views, it’s hot and dry, and really fun.

The higher elevations are cooler and part of the Mohave (and where the Joshua Trees live), whereas lower down in the Colorado Desert the temperature rises and Chollo Cactus thrive. The Joshua Trees are all different shapes: a single upright arm, a full tree, even bent all the way over. They nearly always look like someone reaching up to the sky. Their age can’t be determined like a regular tree (they don’t have rings), so it’s determined by its average growth rate of 1.5in per year. That means many we saw were 50-100 years old.

The Chollo Cactus are strange fuzzing looking plants that are very very spiky (trust me!)

On our second night we soak in the outdoor tub and watch the sunset and then stars rise. I setup the camera and we sleep. Tomorrow we drive to LA.

One night we were bathing in the outdoor bath, and trying to take (tasteful) photos of Anna in the tub. It was fiddly to get the angle right, the lights from the house well balanced and the camera settings dialled in. I eventually took some okay photos, but with all the ins-and-outs I forgot to chock the door, and a wind gently closed it.

Naked, wet, in the dark, more than a kilometre from our nearest neighbour and with snakes around…shit.

While looking around for the key and grabbing a towel I become attached to various cacti. After a short panic, we realised there was an unlocked door to the house. It was the one for the shower. But in its path is a wall with glass on top. With a mixture of fear and glee Anna watches on while I just barely manage to balance on top of the concrete wall and straddle the glass pane. The towel I had been using for modesty had long slipped to the ground before I gingerly I swept my other leg over the glass and gently lowered myself into the shower; and subsequently back inside.

The infamous shower

Palm Springs Modern Homes

8 May 2018 by evo

Cruising some Alexander and Meiselman homes. They were built over about a 10-year period from the mid-fifties, combining modernist principles and simple construction methods. Initially, the Alexander Construction Company was only aiming to build houses efficiently, but in 1957 they partnered with Dan Palmer and William Krisel to add higher concepts to building houses, creating clean lines and designs that opened house to the landscape. I really like them, in part because they remind me of my grandma’s house in Canberra.

Palm Springs — Last Day

8 May 2018 by evo

We were going to walk/bike around to look at all the amazing houses, but it’s been 40 degrees all the time we’ve been here, so we just drove around and “ohh-ahh”-ed in front on some particularly amazing places

Other than that, we’ve just luxuriated around pools and taken shameless photos of each other. It has been so much fun!

We did go out for a drink one night, and were picked up by some rando guys who bought us drinks and let us in on some of the strange workings of Palm Springs. There’s so much money about, and such a holiday vibe, it’s like a trap for people like us who need go back to work to earn money. Lame.