Panera Bread

There is an Amrikan bakery chain called Panera Bread. They are obviously a bakery, but they also have cafés across the country. They are very good. And very popular. 

They are also something else.

They have a charitable foundation called Panera Cares. It looks and runs like any of their cafés, with one exception.

The prices are suggestions only. The expectation is that people pay what they can afford. If you can afford nothing, then you need pay nothing. Those who cannot afford to eat at a regular cafe, can eat here with dignity.

Often, a good meal is paid for with time spent working in the cafe.

We found one of these cafés opposite our hotel in Boston, so frequented it as often as we could. There were often people under training for obvious reasons, but the result was always a pleasure to contribute to.

We wish them well in this venture, and hope that others take up the challenge to provide for the less fortunate in such a dignified and supportive way.

Verdict?

I have seen much more of LA now.

Some parts are actually beautiful.
Some parts are impressive.

But it IS still LA.

"I hate LA" is SO last Thursday.

It's not so bad

Meet me at Starbucks in L. A.

That would be a joke, right?

You can't even specify the street, and expect any better results.

So many streets in LA are stupidly long. They just go on and on and on.

Sepulveda Blvd is 25.4 miles long.
Mulholland Dr is 23.8 miles long.

There are so many. La Brea doesn't even figure in the top twenty. Nor does Santa Monica Blvd. And they are really, really long. Spanning more than suburbs, I imagine some span cities.

While on the subject of addresses;
We probably all know about Amrikan street numbering. Every block starts at a new hundred. That's why their numbering goes so high, and how it is so easy to find an address.

Rather than trawl the street looking for numbers, just go to the right block, and narrow it down from there. It's not the way every street does it, but it is pretty common.

One more thing.

In New York, there is a strange numbering system. Down the middle of Manhattan is Fifth Avenue. It runs down the east side of Central Park. You have probably noticed that the horizontal streets, while not imaginatively named, are prefaced with either west or east. To the west of Fifth Avenue, the streets are prefaced west, and so on.

So the famous 42nd street is either West 42nd St or East 42nd St.

What you may not have noticed, is that the numbering starts at Fifth Avenue, and goes both ways.
On one side of Fifth Avenue is number 1 West 42nd St., and on the other is number 1 East 42nd St.

So on a busy traffic day, best you don't tell a taxi you want to go to 342 West 75th St., when you really need to go to 342 East 75th St. I doubt he would be impressed.

I Hate L.A.

I think I have made this clear in the past.

It's a necessary evil as a means of getting to somewhere. Otherwise it's a craphole.

And then, a couple of trips ago, we discovered the trolley from the airport hotels to Manhattan Beach.

I liked Manhattan Beach.
I didn't want to.
I tried not to.

But I liked it.

Now we have done the tour of L. A.

There are a range of tour routes, all colour coded.
Orange, from The airport hotels to Marina del Rey.
Green from Marina del Rey through Venice Beach to Santa Monica.

Remember the story of the time we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Santa Monica. It was a crappy hotel in a crappy suburb. It was the most expensive hotel we have ever stayed in, and we have stayed at some expensive hotels in our travels. It was also the crappiest hotel we have stayed in.

Anyway, it has been repainted, and it's a Wyndam Hotel. And they have cut the room rates in half.
And the whole neighbourhood has been refreshed. It's really looking good. Bastards!

Yellow route from Santa Monica through Brentwood to Beverly Hills.
Red route from Beverly Hills to Hollywood.
Purple line from Hollywood to Downtown LA.

On the first day, we took the bus from the hotel to Del Rey. Stopped for a while there at a mall. Sarah discovered the "Ralphs" supermarket chain, and we bought some brunch.
Then jumped on green to the pier, and onto yellow and red to Hollywood. Had lunch at the farmers market, and then retraced our steps back to the hotel. Took all day.

The next day we did the whole thing, through to the purple line. This finished just before 6pm, and did not give us time to get all the way back to the pier before the last buss back. As luck would have it, the bus company has a service at 7pm going directly back to the LAX airport hotels.
The only suggestion we would make, is that there should be bust direct from the airport hotels to Hollywood in the morning. Otherwise, by taking the first bus and not stopping, it takes till after 2pm to get to Hollywood.

Los Angeles is a massive city. Actually, its 88 cities. Crazy huge.
Doing 5 circuits in one day was a hard ask, but illuminating.

I won't even pretend that I have seen the city. I have seen bits of it. Mostly on he upper deck of a double-decker, roofless bus. It gives a great perspective. I must say, though, that a short stretch on the Hollywood freeway on the purple route, on the top floor of a double-decker bus without a roof, is, lets say "challenging". I was holding onto anything that could blow away.
Sheesh! Sarah wasn't best impressed.

While on Hollywood Boulevard, we say a red carpet arrival at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Also, on the final run back to the hotel after dark, we travelled the length of La Brea. We travelled through suburbs that are probably best viewed from the top floor of a very tall bus.

Quite a range of experiences in one day.

Back to LAX

The next day we flew to LAX.

United, about 5 hours and change. Survivable.

Hey, guess what?  This time, I DIDN'T get pre-selected by TSA. Bastards!

We are in LAX for about 4 days, and we have a 3-day hop-on-hop-off booking. That will keep us busy.

I have said it many times. Hop-on-hop-off busses are a great way to see a city. This time around, Sarah went all out with tours and hop-ons. It certainly paid off.

As I said before, we went back to Boston, because we didn't get everything done. We had bought a Go Boston card, and it had lots of things to do. One was a tour down to cape cod. We would do it the day before we left.

Read the fine print, idiot! The day before, I reread the voucher, and it said that the tour is only a few days a week. Today is one, tomorrow isn't. Crap! It leaves in 30 minutes, and we don't have time to get there.

We did our PhD on getting to Cape Cod a couple of times since, and its pretty damned hard. No simple bus or train.

So Sarah has been planning this trip for months. Her go-to website? Viator.

With Viator, se got all the tours I have already mentioned in HNL, SFO, NYC and BOS, as well as the new one in LAX.

Martha's Vineyard

So our last tour out of Boston was a day trip to Martha's Vineyard.

This time picked up by a small bus at some ungodly hour. There were 11 of us on this trip, and the driver had water and muffins for us for the trip. Excellent!

Anyway, another drive down to the coast, and a ferry ride across to the Vineyard. We were met by a driver in a slightly smaller van, who took us for a 3 hr tiki tour of the island.

Nice place.

There are some beautiful homes here, and every one of them is staggeringly expensive.

Some fun facts:

Saw Jim Belushi's grave. Fans are constantly leaving things on his headstone, and it needs cleaning daily.

Saw Chappaquiddick Island, where Ted Kennedy failed his driving test. Didn't get over there, because it's only accessible by barge. The bridge we all heard about is on the island, not to it.

Jacky O has an estate of 366 acres on the Vineyard. Since her death, the property is held by her daughter Caroline.

Jaws was filmed here, with lots of locations all over the place.

There's a who's who of famous people who either have or had homes here. Michael J Fox recently sold his home to a retired Boston Ice Hockey player.

Bill Clinton comes here every year, and now so does Obama. In fact, Clinton is a fan of the Black Dog restaurant, now famous. It appears that a Black Dog t-shirt he gave to a certain humidor was used as a piece of evidence linking them together. Doh!

The day was drizzly, but yesterday was worse all over. We didn't move far from the hotel that day, but today was do-able. Even with less than stellar weather, its still an excellent tour.

Very worthwile.

Highly recommended.

Cape Cod

Next Tour.

Fall in Cape Cod. The same tour company as the last few.

Lots of little villages, with lots of cute small (and not so small) homes. Sarah loved it.

Hyannis, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Sandwich.

The tour included a ferry ride from Hyannis out to have a sea view of the "Kennedy Compound".

I have to say, that while it was a nice toddle out into the bay, the intended view is underwhelming.

First, we were not permitted to get very close to shore.

Second, the compound is actually just 3 houses together in a rather exclusive subdivision. No high fences, no big gates. Just three houses.

And they're not even the most impressive houses there. Right next to the 'main' Kennedy house is one that looks a bit like the White House.

This house belongs to the family who owned The Gap and Banana Republic.

Not a Kennedy.







Great area to visit, but if you are looking for the Kennedy compound, the boat ride would be a 'take-it-or-leave-it' option.

Enrique

So on a day off between tours in Boston, Sarah wanted to go and see Enrique Iglesias.

While I was working in Auckland, she rang me to say that he would be having a concert while we are in Boston. There were tickets available. She decided to wait a couple of days till I got home.

When I got back, she couldn't find any seats. Sold out.

When I was back in Auckland, she rang to say that she had found a website that had tickets for sale. She bought some. We found out later that this was a reseller website. The tickets we received were addressed to someone else, but the FAQ on the site insisted that it was legal to resell tickets. Alrighty then...

So we make our way to the stadium, hoping that we won't get thrown out, or worse, arrested. Blong our tickets and ... and ... it's all good. Phew!

So we head on in before somebody changes their mind.

This is the TD Gardens arena, where some team called the Boston Bruins plays ice hockey.

It's actually at a major rail station in the city. Last time we came to Boston, we used this station to get to a cute little town called Rockport. We didn't even realise that straddled across this rather large station was an even larger sports stadium.





The stadium is pretty much like the big one we went to at Sydney Olympic Village to see Ricky Martin. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Anyway, the show was due to start at 19:30, and it did. There was an opening act called jbalvin, whatever that is.

Apparently, it's a latin band with a pretty good rhythm, even to an old white fart like me. The deep percussion rhythm reminds me of Hindi music. I rather liked it.

Then there were a couple of guys doing the dj thing while the band's gear was removed.

Then we saw the 'other half' of the lead act. Not only have we never heard of a bulldog that wasn't a ... um ... bulldog, we didn't realise that this was a co-act till sarah printed the tickets.

While this guy is a singer, he seems to be more dj, and uses a lot of recorded tracks from and with other artists. Apparently, he does tracks with all sorts of artists even I have heard of. Funnily enough, running shazam during a concert is a cool way to see if someone is lip-syncing.
Ok, this guy isn't lip-syncing, his work on stage is just one element of the multilayered performance.

By the way, his use of graphic imagery is fascinating. Very impressive. Oh, and I quite enjoyed his music, too.

After another half hour wait for the stage to be changed again, the main act started. Lots of squealing and waving. No, not from me. Luckily, not Sarah either.

It's funny. The people who had tickets on the floor right against the stage would have been ecstatic to be so close. Worth the big bucks they paid.

But wait. For an acoustic set, they exposed a circular stage at the opposite end of the floor. Enrique and some of his band made their way to this stage, and began a very intimate set.

The guys who paid for those stage-front seats must have been standing at the opposite end from Enrique saying "WTF!!!"

This was unusual. Enrique pulls a guy up on the stage, and proceeds to sing duets with him. The guy cannot sing, and spent most of the time either taking selfies with Enrique, or texting somebody. A bit of a doofus, but boy is he getting laid tonight!

We left the stadium by about 23:30, so that was practically 4 hours of entertainment. Good value.