Woman in the Middle

I have never been a person who loves to drive. Driving is something I have to do in order to do other things I want to do, like shopping, going out to eat, or visiting friends. I don’t hate it, except when I have to go into Los Angeles. Then I really don’t like it, not at all.

Yesterday we went into LA to take Hubby to a museum exhibit we thought he would enjoy for Father’s Day. (More on that later.) Since it was Father’s Day, I drove. That is part of the deal around here for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. You get taken someplace, you don’t have to drive, and you don’t have to touch a cat box for the day. So, yesterday, I drove into the abyss that is Los Angeles and back out again, and lived to tell the tale.

Our day out did not start well. About a mile from our house a big band new white minivan decided it needed to turn left by crossing a solid white line into the left turn lane. Unfortunately, our car was right where they wanted to be. My gut was already a bit unhappy, so the stomach muscle clenching that happened during and after that little episode of almost side swiping didn’t help at all. Then we stopped in the area of City of Industry for lunch at a favorite restaurant of Hubby’s. FYI, people in that neck of the woods are not the greatest drivers. Polite as all get out, constantly yielding right of way to others, when they really should go themselves, which makes for a fun time all its own. Good times, and I hadn’t even gotten to Los Angeles yet!

Alexander Woollcott  supposedly said “Los Angeles is seven suburds in search of a city.” Well, he isn’t too far off about that. While the rest of Southern California has a much more suburban lay out with an uncrowded feel,  even in downtown areas of our older cities (like the big city next door which was founded in 1870), Los Angeles is our one truly urban city, with all that goes with that.

Yesterday, we headed right into the belly of the beast, downtown Los Angeles. When I got off the 101 freeway on First Street, I was tossed right into urban street hell. There wasn’t much traffic (thank goodness)  but there was a streetscape right out of an urban scene reminiscent of a New York or Chicago or Detroit. First Street had buildings on either side that crowded right up to the street. The middle of the road was crowded with overhead wires that fed electricity to a streetcar system. Every once in a while a street car would come rumbling passed, just to add a little apocalyptic color to the scene. I was on a two lane stretch of road, but the right lane or the left lane regularly became a turn only lane, which forced me to jog back and forth to be able to keep going straight ahead.

Due to the street cars, some intersections had “no left turn” signs, even though those intersections looked about the same as the ones where you could turn left. But the signs added another level of color and clutter to the road. As a final layer of confusion, white bicycles were painted on the asphalt, in the middle of the drive lanes. Around my neck of the woods, that painted bicycle means a bike lane for bikes only, and if one were to appear in the lane I was driving, it would mean I had made a big boo boo and needed to get out of that lane fast, before I hit a person on a bike or a police officer pulled me over to give me a ticket. But not in LA, apparently. I drove over and with those painted bicycles for quite a distance yesterday. In downtown LA they must mean “Feel free to ride your bike here and take your life in your hands peddling with the cars!”

Leaving LA yesterday, I was never so happy as when I got on the big, beautiful, wide, 10 freeway, free of claustrophobic overhead wires, constant turn lanes, and bicycle stencils.  As I gripped the steering wheel with both hands, the trusty Camry was like a tired horse that gets a second wind when its rider finally turns it back in the direction of the barn. I had to pull back on the reins to keep it from going 90 miles an hour all  the way home. Later that night, Hubby said “Thank you for driving today.” That man knows how much I love him, to have driven into LA yesterday.

I really don’t want to become one of those women who, after a certain age, refuses to drive on a freeway or very far from home. But I am really looking forward to self driving cars. Really…looking…forward…

The Grove is an open air mall in Los Angles. It is home to some higher end shops such as J.Crew and Michael Kors as well as unique stores such as the American Girl Place, the only one in California. There are a number of places to eat and that all important store to my family – a bookstore. The Grove has a HUGE parking garage that was a little weird and disconcerting to use, I will fully admit. Even my Hubby who commutes on California freeway every day to work (not for the faint of heart, I can tell you), found this parking garage a little C-R-A-Z-Y. As you are going up you have to merge out of the lane you are in, while going up a curve, diving between traffic cones, and looking over your shoulder to make sure no one is in the next lane over, coming up in your blind spot. That is why we parked on the sixth floor. It took that many floors for four adults to figure out what was going on and get the heck out of the lane that just took us up and into the lane that got us to parking. Whew!

In the middle of the Grove was a fountain that danced to music, like a miniature Bellagio fountain. I was a little puzzled was why it was dancing to “Last Dance,” which is over 30 years old. But I still love dancing fountains, even if they are dancing to music that came out when I was in high school.  We indulged while we were there with lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Inside we admired the décor which, as Youngest Daughter pointed out, looked like most of it came from Lord of the Rings. The Cheesecake factory by us isn’t quite so fancy!

Below is the dancing fountain.

For dessert we skipped the cheesecake and stopped by Sprinkles Cupcakes instead. They were delicious!  We tried triple cinnamon, chai tea, Cuban coffee, and milk chocolate. Yum! Below is a photo of the cupcakes we got to choose from.

Right next door to the Grove is the Original Farmer’s Market. It is as different from the Grove as chalk is from cheese.

It is full of places to eat and had we realized that we probably would have skipped the restaurant.  You can get most anything there from Jewish deli to middle eastern, Asian cuisine to classic Mexican food. It is also a place where you can buy baked goods, fresh meat, fruit, vegetables, and cheese. It also has souvenir shops, galore. So you can pick up a roast, some fresh cheese, and a California magnet all at the same place! It is definitely a fun place to look around, although it is mostly outdoors as well so can get warm if the temperature is a little high as it was when we were there.

I noted on the map that there was a park across the street from the Grove. We didn’t have a chance to check it out but I was thinking we could have made a whole day of it between the Grove, farmer’s Market, and taking a walk around the park. Except for parking, which isn’t free,  this could be a relatively inexpensive day out. You could eat at the Farmer’s Market, window shop to your heart’s content, sit and admire the fountain, and then check out the park.