Go figure, a week’s worth of southern Californian memoirs gone, floating down the river of time and memory into subconscious ether. After a week without Internet and two weeks of apartment relocation, I’ve lost the interest and the detailed memories of my trip to SoCal. I’ll try to write down what I can remember for future reference.
I would not wish my worst enemies (well, maybe) a job at Carlsbad attraction Legoland California; it’s a $50/head giant babysitting center which doubles as an excellent contraceptive for any couple wandering through its blocky estate. Beyond the Miniland recreations – admittedly, they were pretty cool, quite photogenic as evident by the amount of pictures I took solely of that area – there were kids of every variety, from screaming horrors to crying scooters and ice-cream-dripping connoisseurs. Fortunately, that evening saw Sui and I hit up a regional favorite Asian restaurant, Seafood Village (1) featuring Typhoon-Shelter-style crab; amazing stuff.
Less famous and annoying was Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, which compensated the reduced amount of children with sharks and other sea creatures. It’s smaller and not as fancy as other aquariums of similar stature, but they put on a lot of shows and events and made the visit feel personal. We then headed north to Santa Monica, checked out the Pier (essentially a cross between San Francisco’s Pier 39 and Santa Cruz’s Boardwalk) and Third Street Promenade (Union Square laid out in street form), with dinner at C & O Trattoria. Should have been warned about those unlimited baked bread ball things before they served their gigantic portions of food.
Continuing with the chill museum motif, we spent the following afternoon at the Getty, an unbelievably nice piece of real estate featuring an equally unbelievably boring gallery of artwork. Ok, that’s not fair; some of the exhibits were pretty cool and the entire complex is very well designed and laid out, but in between the interesting stuff existed a good amount of “filler” material, room after room of abstract paintings, sculptures, and artifacts of 18th century lore. An hour in traffic took us to Rowland/Hacienda Heights, home of the Taiwanese population in the greater LA area. Cheap food abound, and I’m going to see if similar styled places exist around here.
And 6 hours of driving ends this adventure and marks the beginning of the next one. Something about moving, as I recall.
- 避風塘 (↩)
[...] as many picturesque balconies and vista points. To be honest, though, I was more impressed with our prior visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific in LA. Maybe I fell victim to the hype surrounding the MBA, but I [...]