JVPhoto

It was great! Next will be a little Telluride ski weekend, birthday in Berlin and wedding in Cabo. But the next "big" trip will be all of March "circling the Pacific."

I was almost tempted to go back this August. A friend who has been to Londolozi 3x is taking her friend for their 40th. However, I found out that in 2015 they won't be offering single supplement waivers and I just couldn't make it work that soon after this one.


Aside from that been FREEZING in LA & Venice the past few days...


Did a little planespotting at LAX waiting for a friend...


Will be finishing up this TR after the p.s. flight end of the week.

JVPhoto

United Express MRY-LAX + Venice & LA Area



Raisin ready to drive me over and drop me off at MRY.



When Monterey works, it works great. But, when things happen you are left with little to no options. Luckily my 10:45ish flight was on time. The morning flight went mx, I'm not sure what happened with the pax there but the airport line seemed a bit more crowded then normal. They were also looking for two volunteers first offering $175 to take the later flight. That then shortly changed 10 min before boarding to $500 voucher, cab ride to SFO and on an SFO-LAX flight to which two solo travelers came up and took it.

These were the carry ons of a few pax...


I decided this time I was going to stay in Venice and rent a place on AirBnB (it was great, perfect for a duo or even two couples, if you want info send me a message).



I've spent a fair amount of time in Southern California (went to school at UCSB and lived in LA for a year) so I have mixed feelings about what I do here or how I spent my time. Mostly it is with shock that when I come back people want me to go somewhere in Echo Park which is not the 90s gangster girls Mi Vida Loca movie it once was.
But, I'm dating someone and decided it would be a nice place to chill, I could do a bit of work shooting there having people come to me and just not feel pressured. Normally I stay at The Mondrian or Standard (Sunset).















Sunset Drum Circle Video

While I did go pick someone up at LAX one evening I didn't do my planespotting then as it was already dark. But it is cool driving up and seeing all the aircraft lights lined up on the incoming flights.



I did go back to LAX on the southern side by El Segundo/Imperial Ave. I drove around and I wanted to park by the beach but didn't really do much for me there. So I went onto the side street and found a spot at the end of the runway.

2 police drove by but I must have not seemed too menacing.






After about 30 min there I decided to drive up the street more towards the middle of the runway where the hill is the highest and there are benches and about 4-5 other planespotters who are camped out there.











Taking around my friend I did a mix of spots that I like to show people in LA for their first time and then some places I met up with friends who came as recommendations.

The La Brea Tar Pits. So random and fun for 30 min in the middle of the city.

It's also next to LACMA so you can go take the obligatory LA pic with Levitated Mass.


Mandrake Bar on La Cienega was an interesting spot. Good drinks, hipster staff and crowd but was somewhat interesting for LA.


One of my fave spots for something special is Yamashiro in Hollywood which a lot of people don't know about. It's this giant Japanese "mansion" that sits on top of a hill (above The Magic Castle) with pretty good food and great views.


In Venice had lunch at Salt Air (twice) which was good with oysters, baked potatoe soup and lots of other good food that is simple yet different.


NYE we had dinner at Dominick's on Beverly which had great gnocchi, very good meatballs and awesome grilled artichoke. Not wanting to deal with Uber surge pricing and DUI check points we opted after dinner to head back to Venice and go to Roosterfish on Abbot Kinney which is a gay surf/dive bar.


Amazing leather chair cushy seats at the AMC in Marina del Rey!


Dropped the car off at Hertz. I had rented for a Rav4 or whatever class that is. When I landed at LAX they "upgraded" me to a Dodge Caravan...no thanks, I'm not a soccer mom! So I was able to switch to a Toyota Carolla S. Luckily with the gold board/carfirmations the stall # was right there and it took me longer to adjust the mirrors and seat than it was to get the car and on my way...good thing as the line outside of the Gold reception was huge!



Enjoying paying for the vodka I can get free on the plane at the LAX Club right now as I want to hop on UA233 p.s. LAX-JFK.

offerendum

So a safe trip is guaranteed

JVPhoto

United Club LAX & United p.s. Business LAX-JFK



What can you say about the Chase Cheese & Crackers Club? It was crowded and full of people. One custodian did a decent job of cleaning up wrappers and empties. The single bartender had a bottleneck of 5-8 people long the entire time (she was nice and friendly).
I thought I saw Blythe Danner but it wasn't so that was a let down.



Boarding time was 3:40 and I went up to the gate at about 3:36 and was beyond belief when I saw there were no gate lice. I thought wow this must mean we are going to be delayed and not board for a while. Right on the dot the GA came on and invited pre-boarding and then GS/Mil and at that time people started getting in the chutes and all seemed to work well.



The same menu for the past year or two it seems. I do like the tamale stuffed chicken and it's always been my go to. However, on this one I wished they changed the yucca for something green or non-starch veg. The two shrimp were big and great!





The crew was pretty nice and friendly for the most part. I've had better & I've had worse.
Flight had Wifi which was fairly decent speed and instead of 2 hours for $14 it was doing buy 2 get 1 free.

I guess the most interesting part didn't happen to me but provided a little entertainment was the mother/son in 5A/B had the father daughter in row 4. Row 4 across from them came on which was a couple so the FA working our back section of J asked if they wanted to switch so the family could all be in one row.
They obliged. When it came meal time the tray table in 5A wouldn't work or come out, two FAs tried it. The woman then got a bit snippy with the FA because it was the FAs fault as they made them swap and it wouldn't have happened otherwise. FA was pretty cool about it, apologized, said they didn't know there was a mx problem and would do the best to serve them still since they were a couple and could sorta work together with the one tray table and the center console.
I saw the blue customer kit come out and gave them each a white card.



It was nice to see they tried with some effort to put the little cup of toothbrush/paste kits in the lav. Also, for the past years I have enjoyed the Philosophy products, especially the face mist. I hope those things stay.

Landed a little early at JFK which is nice on the timing of this flight since you get in and pretty much the only people in T7 are the flights to Hong Kong and bags come out pretty quick.

Dieuwer

OP, how did you like the restaurant scene in the Sea Point area?

JVPhoto

I can't say there was any fine dining or something that stood out at me. But being able to walk down the main street in the evening and pop into braii(bbq), sushi, Korean, Italian, bit of everything was pretty convenient.

Dieuwer

So it's not a residential neighborhood requiring a car to drive to restaurants...?

JVPhoto

You can see the Peninsula down on the bottom section where I stayed for the first part. All up along Main Road it is full of super markets, coffee shops, fast food and proper restaurants. One evening walked up from the Peninsula to between Marais & London roads are to eat at Postacino (Italian), I didn't go above that on Main Road but it still just looked as busy.

I didn't take a taxi but I used Uber and a trip that would have probably cost $20 in NY cost $7 with Uber CPT.

Cheetah_SA

I live about 2km or so away (on the city side) but even so I rarely hang out in Sea Point. Two very good choices that spring to mind, though, are La Boheme/La Bruixa (side by side, interconnected restaurants serving bistro style food with a Catalan influence on the La Bruixa side) and La Mouette (serving more modern fine dining with an excellent tasting menu - also available with wine pairings).

Cheetah_SA

Think of the main artery of Main Rd/Regent Rd being a commercial street - mostly shops including loads of eating options -with apartment blocks above; and the streets on either side as more or less exclusively residential apartment blocks.

There are occasional eateries in the side blocks; e.g. Winchester Mansions Hotel is one of the few places to eat on the sea front and sometimes has live music.

JVPhoto

I walked by La Mouette nearly every night and was tempted to go but just didn't get around to it. The tasting menu + wine tasting seemed very reasonable! I forget the amount but I want to say it worked out to be like $50.

Cheetah_SA

That's very observant of you! I do believe it probably had much less to do with the aircraft type than with the "hot and high" conditions at JNB. (Even with smaller craft like an A320 the roll can seem to last forever.) Because of this combination of altitude and heat they often bring new aircraft to JNB for testing in extreme conditions.


Oh, and fantastic TR!! :-: Very eclectic and intriguing. Really glad you got such amazing wildlife sightings - and even more pleased with how you captured them on film. ^

JVPhoto

What the what? I had no idea JNB was the same elevation basically as Denver until I just googled it after you brought up the post.

Cheetah_SA

Sounds about right!

Cheetah_SA

Yep. There's a reason the area around Jo'burg is called the Highveld.