I flew the other day Air Canada to Vancouver. IFE didn’t work so they offered us a free drink. I didn’t want to drink alcohol so I thought I would go for a Perrier. But my neighbor (a girl) ordered a Sangria,  I was surprised – since then do they have Sangria ? – so I ordered one too.

I wonder what they mean by authentic. It is produced in Canada. In the end I did not open the Sangria, I took it home. Still I didn’t feel like drinking alcohol, I realized I just ordered one for the novelty.

I remember seeing some old movies and documentaries about bodybuilders training on a beach in Los Angeles. It was the famous Muscle Beach. I was recently in LA and had to see it. I wanted to exercise among the bodybuilders there; I would have posted the video on YouTube and people would have laughed so hard they would have forwarded the link to their friends and their friends to their friends and in no time the video would have become a hit sensation.

I somehow figured it had to be between Venice Beach and Santa Monica so my wife and I took the bus to Venice Beach and we started to walk toward Santa Monica. And we walked and walked and there were no bodybuilders on the beach. We arrived at the hotel and I felt defeated. It was there that I began to research (not before, but after the fact, but this is the story of my life). Where was Muscle Beach? And the answer was that the original Muscle Beach – the one from the old movies and documentaries – is in Santa Monica.

But I was in Venice Beach! I used the Google satellite view and saw the area; I could even make out the training equipment. Isn’t technology amazing?

Today, there is a new Muscle Beach just a little bit south, in Venice Beach. The next day, I had to leave around 4:00 pm, and I wanted to spend the morning on the beach. We stayed for an hour: it was windy and the water was cold, but, since I had failed to check off seeing Muscle Beach from my list of things to do, I had to at least be able to say I went to the beach.

Coming back to the hotel, I saw a bike available, free for the guests. It was around 12:00 pm, so I calculated that I could still make it back to the hotel in time for a 4:00 pm departure. And I rode the bike, passing almost anyone who I could, and I arrived at the famous beach, where there was a competition and free goodies being offered at various stands. I sat at the shortest queue, and got one of the sleeveless t-shirts people wear to the gym, but it would be sometime before I can wear it. Maybe this was the reason I had not been able to find Muscle Beach the day before; I was offered the opportunity to see something better.

I was already enrolled for the promotion that gives 35,000 bonus points after 20 paid nights at the Marriott if you use Visa, and at the hotel I picked up a leaflet offering 2 free nights at a category 1-4 hotel.

By the way, 2 (by the way why two, but sometimes it happens) letters from the Marriott were waiting for me at home informing me about the special offer for bonus points.

I wanted to enrol for the free nights, but the Marriott automated system wouldn’t let me.

So I sent an e-mail inquiring about this, and the answer was: “Marriott analyzes the stay histories of Marriott Rewards members and designates in advance the offer each member will receive if they register for the promotion.” However, they could manually change the offer if I wished, so I was told.

Fair enough, I kind of expected not to be allowed to register for both offers, but I was curious how the system works.
The offer for free nights is interesting: “one free night every second paid stay, up to two free nights, using their Visa card.”

So I could check in Monday, check out Tuesday (Tuesday night at another hotel), check in Wednesday, check out Thursday, and get my free night (I’d have had 2 stays for that week). Next week, do the same, so it would only take 2 weeks to get 2 free nights. Am I missing out on something? Perhaps they bank on the fact that people would not go through all this trouble.

Initially, the 50,000 bonus points (35,000 after 20 paid nights + 15,000 after 25 paid nights) seemed more attractive as I could use the points at any category. But it would take 6 weeks, considering the usual travel pattern, 4 nights away, 3 nights at home. Many things can happen in 6 weeks, like losing one’s job, so no way to reach 25 paid nights, but 2 weeks . . . (with some hard work, I reckon). A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Decisions, decisions, and no action so far. Perhaps I will stay with the bonus points. I mean, I had 2 free nights, which were going to expire on Dec. 31st, and I kind of struggled to find a hotel to go to, as the cities I wanted to go to didn’t have the category 1-4 Marriott hotels for which my free nights were valid.

And no, it is not possible to register for one offer (the free nights) and after 2 weeks to register for the 2nd one (the bonus points). I asked about this, too.

I went there on a Sunday and the street was blocked because of a food festival. I would have liked to go while the stores were open, maybe I could have seen a celebrity, someone famous. 

On Rodeo Drive, there is a small square – a mini-mall, for the lack of a better term; it is called Rodeo Collection.

Notice all the plastic surgery and anti-ageing services. I bet they don’t lack clients.

But what is this? Facebook and Twitter signs on the window?! Facebook and Twitter are for the plebeians. Where is the ‘luxury’ police to demand their immediate removal? They affect the image of Rodeo Drive.

If there are stores who really want to have a cyber-social presence, let it only be asmallworld.net. I don’t know how many people have heard of this social site as it is very exclusive (by invitation only and only a few members have invitation privileges).

And in this patisserie: tea bags that can be found in any supermarket!!! There are some very good high quality teas out there and they sell these mundane teas?! This should not be allowed.

And chips! Again, where are the ‘luxury’ police? I wonder how much of these teas and chips must be sold to pay the rent around here; it must be exorbitant for a place on Rodeo Drive.

And this is ‘Utopia’, the luxury residential cruise ship that will have residences for purchases, and a hotel. You may notice in the photos, on the TV in the background, images of beautiful women, clearly a subliminal marketing scheme.

To discuss purchasing a residence, you cannot just drop by; you have to make an appointment.

‘Utopia’s' construction will finish by 2014, but, really, they should be trying to finish by the end of the world – December 21st, 2012, according to the Mayan calendar – so that, if the world comes to an end, at least one can go down in style.

I went to their website, found the contact information, and asked about the prices of the residences (which were not available on the website). They did not answer so I used Wikipedia, even though I prefer to get information direct from the source. The residences will cost between US$3.9 million and US$26 million For the moment, I am a few million short, so my residency there will have to wait.

I also asked how many points and what kind (Hilton, Marriott, etc.) I would need to book a room in the on-board hotel. Again, no answer, whatever, it is their loss.

Other photos:

I came across an article from “The Globe and Mail”  and I thought I would pass it along.

An excerpt:

What brought all this to mind was a story about the newest plane from Boeing – the Dreamliner.

Some say it may be the best plane ever produced. The program to develop it cost an estimated $32-billion. For that much money, I was hoping Boeing had developed the plane we all want to see – the one that never crashes. Alas, the best the company can do is assure us it will be extremely safe and comfortable.

…………..

Yes, planes are built better today. And they’re unquestionably safer. But if there’s a problem and the plane goes down, the result is merciless. It’s a terrible way to go.

So for $32-billion, I was looking for something more. Like maybe the first parachute-equipped jetliner. I’ve been thinking about this for years and here’s how it works: The plane gets in trouble at 30,000 feet. It’s going down. Everyone aboard is sure to die. Except, at 10,000 feet, a gigantic parachute is activated and the plane floats to safety.

One cannot come to Los Angeles without visiting Universal Studios. What I can say is that it is very unlikely I will visit it again, at least not in the near future. Perhaps for kids it is fun, and this is the reason they are able to sell annual passes; otherwise, I cannot understand why anyone would go more than once a year.

Aside from the Universal Studios tour, Jurassic Park, and perhaps Waterworld - if there were no queues - I would not have bothered with the rest. But, by charging an entrance fee that gets you into all the attractions, Universal Studios gets a lot of extra money they would have missed out on otherwise, not to mention avoiding the logistical complications that would have come from charging for each attraction separately.

Everywhere I went, I was sprayed with water, with the exception of Waterworld (ironic, isn’t it?). The poor guys who were sitting in the front row had buckets of water thrown on them (there were some warnings displayed before entering Waterworld, and I had a feeling this would happen so I chose to sit at a distance). Hope that the water is filtered every day as nobody wants to be drenched in dirty water.

My wife and I went to the House of Horrors, as well (after all, it was included in the price). There, you move in a line and ghosts, skeletons, etc., jump out at you from the wall. They can’t do it to everyone in the line so who gets scared is totally random. The poor guy in front of us got almost everything, so my wife and I couldn’t stop laughing. At one point, he was so disoriented he hit his head on one of those fuzzy mirrors that covered the walls in one section of the corridor.

The Universal Studios tour was good; I wish I could have taken a photo, if not in (ideally), at least beside the DeLorean car used in Back to the Future. Of course, they cannot afford to do this for thousands of visitors, but they do organize VIP tours – maybe they are allowed to stop by this famous car.

Warnings were posted before the rides that recommended caution to those with heart conditions, dizziness, neck and back injuries, pregnancy, etc. From time to time, I get a pain in my neck so it wasn’t a good idea to go on many rides, but they were included in the price. . .

There should also be a warning against eating just before going on a ride. While I was in the queue for Jurassic Park, I bought an ice cream. Not at the 1st kiosk I passed, which would have been the sensible thing to do, but at the 2nd one as I was getting bored and had started to regret not having bought one earlier. The queue started to move faster so I had to eat it in a hurry and, during the ride, I had an uncomfortable sensation of the ice cream in my stomach; I hoped I wouldn’t throw up. I began to think about the people around me – perhaps they had just eaten, too. I was beginning to think what a good idea it was to where those yellow raincoats, but I couldn’t figure out where they were provided.

I saw on various billboards, under the Universal Studios logo, that they are called ‘The Entertainment Capital of L.A.’ Why not of America, would have anyone complained ?

I read in “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, how she was in Napoli and ate “the best pizza in the world”, and I was wondering whether I would ever (or, at least, in the near future) go there and do the same.
“….. it sold the best pizza in Naples. I found this a wildly exciting prospect, given that the best pizza in Italy is from Naples, and the best pizza in the world is from Italy, which means that this pizzeria must offer …. I’m almost too superstitious to say it … the best pizza in the world?”

Recently, I was in Los Angeles and, as my wife and I were waiting for the bus to go the Getty Museum, I had decided to explore around, which my wife didn’t like at all as she said the bus would come and we’d miss it. So I had to tell her that I wouldn’t go too far and would keep an eye on the bus stop. I couldn’t stay still, it seemed such a waste of time just sitting there in the bus stop when there could be so many interesting things to see just around the corner. And I was right, I came across the best pizza in … America. While it may not be the best pizza in the world, I was offered the chance to eat the best pizza in America. It will do; I wasn’t going to complain.



We visited the Getty Museum and, coming back, we went to the pizza restaurant – wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world (I exaggerate but this is the expression).

We ordered a margherita and a vegetarian pizza and, before they were brought to our table, I went to the washroom.
I came back in a state of shock. In order to get to the washroom, one had to go through the kitchen – the washroom door opened right into the kitchen! I didn’t see any rats or cockroaches, but there was disorder, which made it seem dirty even if, perhaps, it wasn’t.

However, I forced myself not to look around too much, I’d already paid for the pizzas and didn’t want to leave.
If I opened a restaurant, I’d put webcams everywhere. I want to see for myself how the pizza I ordered was prepared, not to mention that it would be good hygiene control. If you know you are being watched, you would not take any shortcuts.
So the pizzas came, but I could not enjoy them too much, even if they seemed good; I am not really a pizza connoisseur. Ms. Gilbert has talent and I would never be able to describe a pizza like she does:

“So Sofie and I have come to Pizzeria Michele, and these pies we have just ordered-one for each of us-are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she’s having a metaphysical crisis about it, she is begging me, “Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm?”
…………….
The dough, it takes me half my meal to figure out, tastes more like Indian nan than like any pizza dough I ever tried. It’s soft and chewy and yielding but incredibly thin. I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust – thin and crispy , or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise. On top, there is a sweet tomato sauce that foams up all bubbly and creamy when it melts the fresh buffalo mozzarella, and the one spring of basil in the middle of the whole deal somehow infuses the entire pizza with herbal radiance, much the same way one shimmering movie star in the middle of a party brings a contact high of glamour to every one around her. It’s technically impossible to eat this thing, of course. You try to take a bite off your slice and the gummy crust folds, and the hot cheese runs away like topsoil in a landslide, makes a mess of you and your surroundings, but just deal with it.”

I was in Los Angeles so I could not miss the Getty Center, especially as the admission was free. I liked it very much – it is a must for anyone visiting L.A.

The Getty Center is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, which is the world’s wealthiest art institution. The trust was established in 1953 by oilman J. Paul Getty, who was one of the richest men in America.
It was the year the Cuban Revolution began, and one of its aims was to expropriate the wealth of people like J. Paul Getty. There is a certain sense of irony in that the exhibition currently (actually it closes today) at the Getty Center is “A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now.”

One of the sections of the exhibition, “1959: The Revolution,” contains Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other propaganda photos. J. Paul Getty is probably turning in his grave.

If I had known that Getty had written books, I would have looked for his book, “How to Be Rich,” and taken a photo of it next to this one (the one with Che Guevara on the cover), just for the effect. 

But wait a moment, the book, “How to Be Rich,” is not in the museum store (did a search on its website)!!! J. Paul Getty is turning again in his grave. However, the store has his other two books, “As I See It” and “The Joys of Collecting”, it isn’t so bad.

On one side of the poster, the exhibition about revolutionary Cuba; on the other side, a religious exhibition. 


Did they do it on purpose? Just to demonstrate that the Center is neither left nor right nor center, and it wants to cater to all tastes? Or it was just by accident?

People like to throw money in the fountain and, talking with one of the guides, she said the coins create problems, like changing the acidity of the water. There is also lots of work involved to collect and separate the coins (from all over the world) and donate them, as the Center is not allowed to keep the money.

I asked why not put a sign (armed guards would be overkill), like below, saying not to throw money into the fountain, but she said people would still do it. I disagreed – most people would comply, especially if the reasons were given – and it seemed strange that the Center doesn’t do such a simple thing as a warning sign.

However, on the Getty Center blog, the post, “Change: Collecting Coins at the Getty Museum,” doesn’t say anything about the problems; in fact, it seems to endorse the wishing-well tradition. So now I understand why there is no sign: they’ve turned it into an attraction. I watched the video provided and found it interesting, what the commentator said: they used to collect a 5 gallon bucket worth of money bi-weekly but, since the economic downturn, it is now a 2 gallon bucket being donated.

Coins are thrown into a fountain for luck, but, due to the crisis, people have less money so they throw in fewer coins and this means less luck so, subsequently, less money, which, again, only deepens their own economic crisis and, again, they throw in even fewer coins, meaning even less luck. At times like this, people should throw in more coins in order to break the vicious circle.