El Matador Beach, Malibu, California

I’m excited to present my first published article for the San Francisco Chronicle‘s travel section!

Malibu’s surf and sand a respite from urban L.A. is a “Weekend Getaway” for the Chron, and takes you on a journey to only a handful of my favorite spots in my favorite 27-mile stretch of Los Angeles-area coastline.

Please enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions about Malibu!

(Or if you’d like to go — I’d happily be your tour guide.)

- Melanie

Travels With Two

Just the other night we left the menorah a-burnin’ on the mantle and headed out in search of Christmas lights, just like we do every year.

Tooling around San Marino, a fancy suburb near Pasadena, California, we found some pretty spectacular lights on St. Albans Road (see photo above). Adam came across this sparkling annual community effort in a cool article on the best places to see Christmas lights in the Los Angeles area, causing me to reconsider my firm conviction that I already knew all the best places for lights in this great big crazy town.

As we stood out on St. Albans’ weed-free sidewalk, thin-blooded and shivering in our shirtsleeves, oohing and aahing over the splendor of it all,  I was reminded anew that a shared adventure need not take you far from home. It just needs to take you out of yourselves for a while.

So wherever you’re headed this holiday season, please enjoy, be patient with traffic and/or the often-humorless TSA, and know that I’m wishing you exploration, happiness, wine, song, a nap or two, and the romantic glow of just about a million colored lights.

XOXO,

Melanie

Travels With Two

Placemat at L.A.'s Caffe Bella Roma

Courtesy of Bertolli, we recently took a unique 9-hour tour of Los Angeles, indulging in Italian food from restaurants and purveyors all across town.

The verdict? A truly delicious day spent enjoying a version of our home city that we’d never seen — or tasted.

Francesco Bertolli started a little food shop in Lucca, Italy back in 1865, but these days, you’ll find Bertolli products in supermarkets across Europe, New Zealand, Australia and North America. They still make excellent olive oil and pasta sauces (which I’ve used for years), but I just recently learned that they also make prepared meals of traditional Italian dishes (like, say, Chicken alla Vodka & Farfalle). They value Italian regional cuisines and ingredients, and put this tour together  – with the help of local sommelier, food writer and lovely human being Stacie Hunt – to celebrate their connection to Italy, anywhere and everywhere.

Here’s how our staggering culinary adventure went down:

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Café Bella Roma SPQR
1513 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035 –  (310) 277-7662

We started our day here with cappuccinos and cornetti…and for that half-hour, all was right with the world.

At this small and cheerful bakery (along an otherwise faceless, concrete swath of the Westside), Roman expat Robert Amico specializes in cornetti, the Italian version of croissants. These flaky little pockets of magic use just about half the butter of their French cousins, plus a dash of shortening and a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Some have a marzipan-style cream inside, some are plain, both are delightful. Pair either with a strong espresso drink that’ll have you dreaming of the Spanish Steps, then consider hanging out until the antipasti starts appearing.

Caffeine and cornetti at Cafe Bella Roma SPQR

Obika Mozzarella Bar
Westfield Century City Shopping Center, 10250 Santa Monica Boulevard, Upper Level, Los Angeles, CA 90067 – (310) 556-2452

This modern, glassy space in what’s colloquially known as the Century City Mall is one of two local outposts of an Italian chain (the other L.A. Obika is in the Beverly Center). Obika’s Chef Simone Santopietro offers a passionate introduction to the world of bufala mozzarella, which is made from honest-to-God water buffalo milk and imported here three times a week from Italy’s southern Campania region. If you still think of mozzarella as off-white sticks of string cheese, check out a tasting of two to five ball-shaped varieties paired with arugula, tomatoes and a little spring-grassy olive oil; I swooned over the creamy and intense pontina, while Adam, who generally prefers sharp, aged cheeses, was partial to the firm, smoked affumicata. You can come here from morning ’til night, but I’d suggest trying out the prosecco-laced romance of Aperitivo Hour (4:30 to 7:30). Skip the awkward metal stools by the bar and head outside to the umbrella-shaded patio.

At Obika, the chef shows off bufala mozzarella from Italy's Campania region

Primi al Mercato and Norcino Salumeria
The Market at Santa Monica Place, 395 Santa Monica Place, Santa Monica, CA 90401 – (888) 530-5204

All hail Piero Selvaggio: the maestro of one of America’s greatest special-occasion restaurants, Valentino, has created a relaxed, affordable way to transport yourselves to southern Italy. Primi al Mercato is half a take-home deli, half a warm, friendly, white-tablecloth restaurant, a lovely place to pick up a meal to share with friends or sit down to a grown-up dinner together; Norcino is a reverent homage to meat and cheese.

We hadn’t yet been to The Market, the swanky high-end food court at the formerly dowdy, now glittering mall at Santa Monica Place, and our head was turned every few seconds by something that looked tasty — that is, until Primi al Mercato’s pasta-making demonstration caught our full attention. Chef Fernando and his wife (who make a great team) spread out flour, eggs and skill across the white-marble counter and got down to gnocchi-ing. By the time they’d finished, we’d see the birth of beet-red “Venus’ Bellybuttons” and spinach-tinted cavatelli, forming a big yummy bowl of Italian flag-i-tude. These demonstrations happen every hour, and you can purchase the spoils — even a gluten-free version — for later use. 

We headed next door to the restaurant to see what the kitchen would do with all that pasta. The crowd favorite seemed to be a lamb ragu, but I fell utterly in love with a Tuscan pici with pecorino and fava beans as big as my pinky finger. Also exciting: the wine list focuses on the Earth’s south, from Italy right ’round to Southern California; we were both pleasantly surprised by elegant, not-too-dry whites and reds from Sicily.

By now we didn’t need to eat anything else — but that was too darn bad. We hoisted ourselves 100 feet across The Market to Norcino Salumeria and cozied up to a table laid with wafer-thin slices of acorn-fed prosciutto and flute-fulls of prosecco. Sounds delightful, yes? Well, our sommelier friend Stacie insisted that, it being summertime during this tour, sparkling red Lambrusco would be the far better tipple — and in a flash, Piero made it so. Turns out this often dry, sweet and/or entirely overlooked wine makes the ideal palate-cleansing complement to the fatty richness of salumi. 

Pasta making, serving and red olives at Primi al Mercato's "laboratorio," and salumi alchemy at Norcino

Caffé Bellagio
Third Street Promenade and Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90401 – (310) 394-3400

So, you know what goes perfectly with eating too much? Gelato.

We rolled like barrels for a few blocks to the center of Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, right up to the door of a glass-covered kiosk we’d probably walked by 50 times in our young lives. (To be fair to myself, though, it’s right in front of a super-distracting Anthropologie.) Inside, magical fresh-fruit gelatos (featuring milk instead of cream) are whipped up using produce from the area’s famous farmers’ market. Beside a straight-outta-Italy orange Vespa parked inside the shop, we were treated to cool, velvety spoonfuls of the best strawberry gelato we’d ever had…all apologies to Florence.

At Caffe Bellagio, the sign behind the Vespa on which I'm sitting says: "Please don't sit on the Vespa" (*cough*)

Osteria Mamma
5730 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038 – (323) 284-7060

Our last stop of the day was way on the other side of town, in the Larchmont neighborhood near Paramount Studios. In a cozy space that for years was one of our Mexican favorites, Osteria Mamma is now a paean to the Paduan home cooking of the Cortivo family. Smiling, blond and shy, Loredana Cecchinato is the Osteria’s resident Mamma, leading her kitchen to an unassuming brilliance. Our group, far from actually hungry by now, fairly devoured a flotilla of her dishes, which were all too gorgeous to refuse.

I have only a few wonderful things to mention: fig and gorgonzola risotto; gnocchi with porcini mushrooms; sardines with ribbons of onion and plump raisins (stay with me, here, and have faith); and fig and prosciutto bruschetta with fancy little dollops of mascarpone. I’d also recommend reservations, as the two-sided dining room here is none too large. Be sure to check out the far eastern wall, lined with Cortivo family photos — including one of bombshell Mamma, where she looks a little like Sophia Loren.

Homestyle dishes from Padua and family photos at Osteria Mamma

If high airline prices to Europe are getting you down this year,
go ahead and design your own Italian food tour right outside your own front door.

Or maybe just stay in and make an Italian meal together by candlelight. (*Ahem.*)

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I love that we got to share this day with some wonderful local folks.

 From left to right:

Romy Schorr of Romy Raves  
Amir of Duo Dishes   
Andrea Fellman of Savvy Sassy Moms 
Sharon Garofalow of  Cupcakes & Cutlery  
Loredana Cecchinato, aka “Mamma”
Chrystal of Duo Dishes
Filippo Cortivo, Loredana’s son and Osteria Mamma’s manager
And beside us, sommelier and writer Stacie Hunt

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This fabulous day of stuffing our faces across L.A. was sponsored by Bertolli,
whose olive oil I’ve been cooking with since 1990.

All observations and opinions here are my own.

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Travels With Two

The grounds of Rancho La Puerta in Baja, Mexico

Adam have spent the last few blissful days down here in Tecate, Baja, Mexico checking out Rancho La Puerta, a lovely, relaxing wellness and spa resort.

He’s tentatively planning to leave tomorrow (I’ll be here the whole week) but after a few fitness classes, a spa treatment, delicious and healthy food, some detox from caffeine and a couple of peaceful nights of sleep, this place may just inspire him to change his mind.

Just four miles over the border from San Diego, California, it took us about three hours to drive down here from Los Angeles on one of the most beautiful (if chilly) days in human history. Adam was nervous at first about crossing the border by car, but I just had a feeling it would be fine. We brought $30 US apiece for the border crossing tax and our passports…then proceeded to roll right through the spot where we’d thought we’d find a lineup of border patrol. Paused at a stoplight in the small town of Tecate, we realized we’d just entered Mexico.

I can’t imagine it’ll be so easy heading back out, but at least I (or we) will have tacos to keep us warm. The whole town of Tecate is full of one stand after another, a hallowed and legendary center of taco-dom here in Baja – itself the land of the taco.

It’s also simply beautiful here. Beneath tall, rocky hills that signify the start of the U.S. border, you’ll find low-water plantings in every shade of green, as well as deep orange, magenta, yellow, purple and red. Wisteria hangs from every other arbor, and the sturdy, gnarled grape vines here were planted by priests in the early 1800s to make sacramental wine. (Now they’re just used for, well, grapes.) Whole families of bunnies and friendly cats wander the grounds; the latter will come to hang out with you if you pretend not to care about them.

We’ve already taken a whole passel of classes, from Feldenkrais to circuit training to Latin dance, and our spa treatments yesterday left us feeling calmer and smoother. I’ve got two more to look forward to, and so does Adam…if he stays.

Yesterday we took a guided bird walk with one of the funniest guys here, and today we’re taking a Thai massage class for partners. There are still miles of hikes, a cooking class in the Rancho’s renowned cooking school, a day trip to the more elegant side of Tijuana, Pilates classes, core workouts, relationship workshops, stretching, crystal bowl sound therapy and more to come. It’s turning out to be a wonderful break from our everyday lives, both separately and together.

I’ll have more to share next week about the Rancho, including a special offer. I think any working couple could benefit from this place!

This week we are fully comped guests of Rancho La Puerta, allowing us to have the full spa, wellness and resort experience and share it with you.

Travels With Two

Downtown Los Angeles, along Broadway

Yes, Virginia…L.A. has a real downtown.

It’s got cool restaurants, wine bars, galleries, museums, theater, music and a handful of historic tours. It’s full of bustle, grime, fancy lofts, sadness and glory.

In other words, these days, it’s where you’ll find Los Angeles.

When I first moved to L.A. back in 1993, “Downtown” was a scary place that no nice young woman still speaking to her parents ever went. Naturally, it’s where I found the best room rental deals in the classifieds.

I’ll never forget the water-stained studio apartment with the naked guy out front at the bus stop. At 2pm. Or then there was the ramshackle Craftsman on Traction (I swear, that was the street) in which fourteen people were running a commune in Miss Havisham‘s house, replete with 1912 plumbing. The very next day, I found a listing on a UCLA bulletin board and by week’s end had a respectable room in Westwood.

Downtown hadn’t always been so undesirable. It had long been home to the Convention Center; corporate offices in shiny skyscrapers; wholesale districts for jewelry, fashion and flowers; as well as several of the city’s greatest cultural offerings.

However, for several decades now, it’s also been the site of America’s largest Skid Row, where newly-released prisoners and uninsured mental patients are sent to wander aimlessly, build makeshift encampments and seek often inadequate assistance in building better lives for themselves.

Graffiti along L.A.'s Skid Row

The heart of Skid Row is Los Angeles Street, which runs one ironic block parallel to Main Street, the heart of Downtown’s urban renewal. Further west from Skid Row is Little Tokyo, where some of the the area’s most expensive housing and retail continue to rise. This juxtaposition of Have and Have Not isn’t unique to L.A., but it does illustrate a gritty/shiny sense of the city’s reality.

These days, that old water-stained apartment building I once fled has been replaced by a fancy loft co-op. That shabby house was knocked down long ago, and a for a while, one of L.A.’s favorite restaurants stood nearby.  The city hasn’t yet reconciled how thousands of homeless people fit into this slow-moving wave of urban development, but whether or not anyone’s ready for it, Downtown is becoming pretty darn popular.

Outdoor market crowd at Downtown Art Walk, held every second Thursday

Here are just some of the things you’ll find to do Downtown:

Restaurants
Blossom (426 S. Main Street) A cheap, delicious and cheery place for Vietnamese
Border Grill (445 S. Figueroa Street) Creative pan-Latin from two local celebrity chefs, this fun place features a hoppin’ outdoor patio and a shuttle to area performance venues
Bottega Louie (700 S. Grand Avenue) Deafeningly loud but fun, with a popular cocktail bar, huge dining room, and one of the city’s sexiest bakery/gourmet deli cases
Cicada (617 S. Olive Street) Glorious Art Deco decor on the ground floors of the historic Oviatt Building, the kind of place you’ll want to make an entrance
Church & State (1850 Industrial Street, #100) A friendly little southern French bistro with festival lights strung across the dining room
Empress Pavilion (988 N. Hill Street) The grande dame of Chinatown, grab any available table for traditional dim sum, then roll out onto Central Plaza
The Lazy Ox Canteen (241 S. San Pedro) A small plates, gastro-pubby kind of place, featuring ingredients that might stump even diehard foodies
Pete’s Cafe & Bar (400 S. Main Street) 1930s decor and a lively bar scene create a warm setting for comfort food (hello, short ribs) and a great wine list
Café Pinot (700 W. 5th Street) On warm evenings, sit outside in the courtyard beside the stunning Central Library and dine on fancy farmer’s market fare
R23 (923 E. 2nd Street) Special occasion dining in an art gallery/design-y setting that will stretch your sushi horizons
WP24 (24th floor of the Ritz-Carlton) Wolfgang Puck’s spin on Cal-Asian, amidst the sparkle of skyscrapers; drop a bundle on your anniversary or try small plates in the lounge
Wurstküche (800 E. 3rd Street) In case you won’t make it to Belgium this year, here you can both still indulge in a sausage, beer ‘n’ fries extravaganza

The bar at Bottega Louie

Bars
Broadway Bar (830 S. Broadway) Dress up a little and swan around this former movie palace with a handcrafted cocktail or two
Corkbar (403 W. 12th Street) At this gleaming palace of wine, you can eat a full, casual, tasty meal…but no one would judge you if you just came for the flights
Golden Gopher (417 W. 8th Street) On a still-seedy street, this friendly little joint features lamps with golden gophers, a tiny convenience store, great cocktails and a photo booth
Edison (108 W. 2nd Street, #101) Several floors deep in a former 1920s power station, this swanky place is fun for club-goers of all ages, with plenty of dim corners for canoodling
Gallery Bar at the Millennium Biltmore (506 S. Grand Avenue) Step back into the 1930s and cozy up to each other amidst a little warm, gilded elegance
Mignon (128 E. 6th Street) Belly up to this small rectangular bar full of Eastside hipsters to enjoy European wines and cheeses
Rooftop Bar at The Standard (550 S. Flower at 6th Street) Dip your toes in the pool or lounge in a trippy little vibrating waterbed pods, surrounded by Downtown’s tall buildings
Seven Grand (515 W. 7th Street) A nouveau billiards hall/hunting lodge that celebrates sartorial flourishes and amber liquors
The Varnish (118 E. 6th Street) Feels like a 1930s speakeasy, where some of L.A.’s best bartenders revive antique cocktail recipes; there’s a secret entrance though Cole’s next door

Just another hunting motif at Seven Grand

Galleries
Downtown Art Walk (2nd Thursday of each month) Downtown is home to some of the city’s most progressive galleries, and Art Walk is the best time to check them all out. Essentially a huge, multi-block street party, along Main Street you’ll find food trucks and an outdoor market selling local designers’ wares as a DJ spins.

Museums
The Gallery at REDCAT (W. 2nd & Hope Streets, beside the Disney Concert Hall – enter on 2nd)
Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (152 N. Central Avenue)
Japanese American National Museum (369 E. 1st Street)
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) (250 S. Grand Avenue)
Museum of Neon Art (136 W. 4th Street)

Sculpture in the plaza beside the Museum of Contemporary Art

Performance Venues
The Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County (135 N. Grand Avenue) is comprised of four venues:
Ahmanson Theatre Big-ticket Broadway stage productions
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Opera, ballet and musicals
Mark Taper Forum Generally features Tony/Pulitzer Award winning plays
Walt Disney Concert Hall Home to the L.A. Philharmonic, this twisted-metal landmark hosts musicians and singers from around the world

And at the heart of the L.A. Live entertainment complex(800 W. Olympic Blvd.), you’ll find:
Nokia Theatre
STAPLES Center

The Disney Concert Hall, designed by L.A. local Frank Gehry

Stuff That’s Been Around for Ages and is Still Cool
Angel’s Flight (351 S. Hill Street) Billed as “the shortest railway in the world”
Bradbury Building (304 S. Broadway) A Victorian gem, and the oldest still-in-use office building in the city
Central Library (630 W. 5th Street) A 1920s icon in the city, this astonishing building contains an amazing rare books section and a beautiful art gallery
Chinatown (centered along N. Broadway and N. Hill Street) Re-created in the 1930s by Hollywood set designers, be sure to visit the vintage Central Plaza
Clifton’s Cafeteria (648 S. Broadway) Around since 1931, a fun place to get a cheap, hearty, non-fussy meal surrounded by a kitschy Tiki/woodsy/waterfall fantasy
Grand Central Market (317 S. Broadway) Geared towards the local Latino community, you’ll find foods from Mexico, El Salvador, Cuba and more, in addition to fresh produce
Little Tokyo/Japanese Village Plaza (350 E. 1st Street) America’s first Japanese neighborhood fans out from a bustling plaza between E. 1st and 2nd Streets
Olvera Street (845 North Alameda Street) Originally created as a tourist attraction, this pedestrian lane still offers a mini-trip to Mexico, replete with paper flowers and street food
Union Station (800 N. Alameda Street) The city’s finest (and still humming) train station, this soaring Art Deco space features a unique, romantic restaurant/bar called Traxx

Downtown Tours to Take
Esotouric Bus adventures into the secret heart of Los Angeles
Little Tokyo Walking Tour A free, self-guided tour of the whole neighborhood
Los Angeles Conservancy Designed to highlight local preservation issues, offers screenings in Downtown’s old movie palaces and both guided and self-guided tours of the area
The Undiscovered Chinatown Walking Tour (first Saturday of each month, $20 per person)

Getting There
Be warned, it’s not cheap to park. Expect to drop $3 an hour at a meter. It’s the same or more at public lots, but in this part of town where blocks are long and sometimes hilly, it’s advisable to pay once, walk away and avoid a ticket. Click here to find public parking lots in Downtown L.A.

Better yet, skip driving altogether and take the subway. Many L.A. neighborhoods are connected to Downtown via the Metro, where trains and stations are clean and adorned with amazing work by local artists. We’ve taken the train Downtown a couple of times now, and despite the need for good walking shoes, it couldn’t be easier. Here, check out the Metro site for yourselves.

See? You’re halfway there already.

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See also
The Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles: Get Down to Business
Adventures in Layover Land: Los Angeles
Invitation to an Underground Dinner

Travels With Two

The Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles stands tall downtown

The husband and I spent a recent, relaxing overnight at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Los Angeles, right in the heart of the L.A. Live entertainment complex.

With a swanky spa, gorgeous Club Lounge and glittering skyline restaurant, it’s a brilliant place for couples to stay when one partner has business in the area.

In December 2008, the L.A. Live complex sprang up around the Los Angeles Convention Center and Staples Center, bringing bars, restaurants and new performance venues to a part of town where once, you could’ve just about seen tumbleweeds at high noon. Since April 2010, soaring high above the plazas and pedestrian-only lanes (as well as many other downtown skyscrapers), the Ritz-Carlton L.A.‘s uniquely oblong, blue-glass building has been a clear vote of confidence in the area’s impressive commercial boom.

The hotel’s design is certainly luxurious, though its location isn’t typical for its brand: rather than an oceanside bluff or a city’s fanciest neighborhood, it stands tall in an island of Blade Runner-esque neon and concrete. From almost every room, views are of a glowing cityscape and fascinating historical jumble that visitors rarely see in detail from the freeways and surrounding mountains.

While the lobby here is only large enough to get you checked in, it’s actually connected to the huge, gleaming lobby of the adjacent and more casual Marriott. (Here you’ll find an Illy coffee kiosk with stunning desserts, a sexy little cocktail bar and a seasonal/organic restaurant from local celebrity chef Kerry Simon.) The two hotels also connect at the Marriott’s 4th-floor pool and the Ritz-Carlton’s 23rd floor, forming what amounts to a giant game of Tetris.

The Ritz-Carlton itself has five key features: the pool, the spa, WP24, the Club Lounge, and a warm, friendly staff.

The 26th floor pool area looks out at some of the most remarkable downtown buildings, but it’s also possible to feel a world away here; we preferred its sophisticated vibe to the party at Marriott’s 4th-floor pool bar. Large enough for an event, the Ritz-Carlton’s pool has a delightful cocktail bar, a nice lady to bring you refreshments and towels, a series of cozy cabañas, and a big, bubbling hot tub. There are plugs hidden discreetly here and there, but you could just as easily unplug entirely and I don’t know…read something.

The 26th-floor pool area

Both muted and mirrored, with touches of gold, silver and downy-soft fabrics, the couple-friendly spa is a blend of minimalism and glitz. Every Thursday through Sunday from 3pm-6pm, the co-ed relaxation lounge features “The Happiest Hours,” where you tuck into complimentary Champagne and nibbles like gourmet crackers, aged cheese and olives, then snuggle together in plush, round beds rimmed with silvery beaded curtains. (Let’s keep it tasteful, though, folks — we’re all in bathrobes, here.)

Our treatments were administered in separate rooms by two sisters, and when we reunited afterwards, we both used the same word: amazing. Adam often leaves a massage unimpressed and still feeling tight, but this time he was calm, dreamy and quiet, with that thing finally out of his left shoulder. I was privy to Green Your Body, where, to the strains of New age guitar, I was sloughed smooth, painted in detoxifying seaweed, wrapped up like a warm burrito, petted on the head, gently prodded towards the in-room shower, and then massaged within an inch of my ability to stay awake. I took my newfound bliss to a curving, heated, tiled bed in the ladies’ steam room, which I happily had all to myself.

The spa's "Happiest Hours" are 3-6pm, Thursday through Sunday

The whole spa is clean, quiet and inviting, with a magical ability to both hold and hide many human beings. Non-hotel guests are welcome here, and during the Happiest Hours, you can get 20% off retail items (candles, Carita and Eminence products, and more) and a complimentary makeup application. I did consider the latter before our big dinner, but by now we were both feeling like jelly on legs; we decided on a nap, instead.

Soon after, we met two friends in the lounge bar on the 24th floor. On a Saturday night, the place was hopping with casually-dressed 30- and 40-somethings. The enormous room here is carved into cozy nooks with curved partitions and cushy chairs, and a wall of windows lets in the city glitter. The Euro-California wine list?  Staggering. But if you ask me, the cocktail to try is the spicy Dragon’s Fire, made with tequila, grapefruit, jalapeño and basil.

The adjacent restaurant, WP24 by Wolfgang Puck is drop-dead elegant, with high ceilings and low lighting to let the city shine. One of L.A.’s most famous chefs, Puck (and his female chef de cuisine, Sara Johannes) has put much of Asia on one menu and given it a California spin. We all went for a four-course tasting menu, and unanimously loved our sexy plates of five different dumplings, as well as an exquisite sea bass baked in a salt crust. The latter was presented to the table pre-filleting, and it was so gorgeous that we almost applauded.

Wolfgang Puck's WP24 lounge and restaurant

WP24 is no Tuesday-night-dinner haunt, though: the restaurant is special occasion all the way. Tasting menus range from $80-$110 per person, before you’ve had a drop to drink; your bill might require the justification of a milestone celebration.

After a restful night in our small, comfortable 23rd-floor room overlooking the Staples Center, we wandered between reading two newspapers amongst 5 gajillion thread-count sheets and watching snippets of news on a mystifying/exciting flat-screen TV built into the bathroom mirror. Apparently, at the Ritz-Carlton, the future hath arrived.

Our deluxe room on the 23rd floor, with a view of the Staples Center

We whiled away the rest of the morning in the Club Lounge, a brilliant add-on option if one or both of you is in town on business (approximately $60 US per night). Here, the city view stretches from ocean to mountains and the five daily setups of food are delicious (fresh-baked pastries, lobster roll sandwiches, pretty salads, California cheeses and house-made potato chips). Mimosas are hand-delivered with a smile, and fancy glass canisters overflow with colorful macarons. Most importantly, though, the Lounge gives you both a one-stop place to eat and drink, catch up on email, or simply decompress and watch the metropolis unfold from on high.

Club Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles

Yes, you’re surrounded by L.A. Live, but even with a Katsuya Sushi, yet another Wolfgang Puck restaurant, an outpost of L.A. Farm and a Regal Cinemas multiplex, there’s nothing so romantic about the complex that demands you go exploring. In my opinion, aside from the nearby and über-popular diner, The Original Pantry Cafe, the best of downtown L.A. requires either a long walk (in a still-transitioning area) or a subway ride. By all means, leave some time to check out the area together, but if you’ll only have brief breaks from work, it’s a great idea to have the Lounge in which to lounge.

For us, though, the greatest pleasure about this place was the staff. Unlike many hotels in L.A., the Ritz-Carlton‘s done a brilliant job of hiring an accurate representation of L.A.’s multi-ethnic citizenry. In addition, each person we met was more warm and helpful than the last: if you have a question about that building over there, the wine you’re drinking, the history of the city, where to catch the Metro, or just about anything else you can think of, the folks here will either have (or immediately find you) the answer. In staying here, we both felt like we could check all of our weekly cares at the door.

The next time one of you has business in this convention/financial/corporate part of town, stay here and you can turn the trip into a relaxing getaway for two.

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Adam and I were invited guests of the Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles, and received complimentary/discounted lodging, Club Lounge access, spa treatments and dinner.

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See also
What’s to Do in Downtown L.A.

Travels With Two

This past weekend marked my first visit to the Los Angeles Times Travel & Adventure Show, the largest travel show in the western United States.

It was also my first visit to any travel show, anywhere.

After exploring the entire show in the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center, I learned a surprising amount about the world, discovered some great ways to help countries in crisis and found that many tourism outlets are becoming increasingly open to a professional relationship with travel bloggers.

Ah, the irony: every year during the weekend of the L.A. Times Travel & Adventure Show, I’ve been traveling. Having the chance to finally attend this year was extremely exciting.

Co-produced by Unicomm, a trade show management company that presents a national series of Travel & Adventure Shows, one of the main sponsors of this year’s show was Taiwan. As this is a country I’d love to explore more fully, I happily pored over info on SITA World Tours’ 8-day ”Highlights of Taiwan” trip while sipping a boba tea and watching a splashy dance show with elaborately costumed versions of the Taiwanese folk god Santaitz (The Third Prince).

Stationed around the five-acre show floor were about 400 other booths and interactive events, including discounted books, a zipline, a 25-foot rock-climbing wall, a huge scuba pool, a steer-roping corral and a global performance stage sponsored by the World Heritage Cultural Center. At the latter, I caught a little Bollywood dancing, some vibrant flamenco, and traditional Chamorro musicians and paloteo dancers from Guam.

One of the most surprising (and clever) features of the show was a huge bank of AAA travel agents, live and in-person. (AAA was yet another sponsor of the show.) For those visitors who had discovered a destination, tour or cruise at the show and had their vacation schedules handy, these agents could book that dream trip right on the spot. I eavesdropped here for a while and overheard bookings for a river cruise through Eastern Europe, a dude ranch in Montana, a summertime sojourn to South Korea and an eco-friendly tour of eastern Costa Rica; all were made for couples in their late 40s and early 50s.

Several Los Angeles Times photographers gave how-to presentations on their craft (composing travel snapshots with a sense of place, capturing memories of your children on vacation, etc.). Mark Boster gave a particularly inspired account of his dream assignment: shooting Yosemite National Park, his favorite place on Earth, in all four seasons. He was having a great time sharing his tips and stories at the show, and felt only slightly wistful about not being in Tuolomne Meadows to shoot the largest moon seen in the last 20 years.

It was a special joy to wander through the Africa section and visit with reps from &Beyond, the company with which we traveled to Botswana and Tanzania. A few nights earlier, I’d had the opportunity to meet James Currie, the company’s brand ambassador, at a gathering of the Association for Celebrity Personal Assistants, who are responsible for booking a dizzying caliber of adventures for their clients; Currie was there to give his exciting spiel about the company as a whole, while I gave a short and heartfelt presentation about my personal experiences in Africa. At the travel show, the &Beyond booth was pretty swarmed all day, as were booths for Ethiopia, Morocco, South Africa and Uganda.

Three countries had a special presence at the show: Haiti, Egypt and Japan.

For Haiti, an enclosed area ran an updated version of the song We Are the World on a loop, reminding show attendees that every download of the tune benefits earthquake relief efforts in the country. For more information or to make a donation, please visit the We Are the World Foundation website.

The Egyptian Tourist Authority manned a booth, and I was one of hundreds of people who stopped by to express my excitement about seeing them so soon after massive civil unrest and the overthrowing of Hosni Mubarak. For now, you can all but have the Great Pyramids or a Nile cruise to yourselves, but of course, the tourism industry there hopes that this will soon change.

Japan, which just last week experienced one of the world’s most epic natural disasters, erected a red pagoda touting relief efforts from the Red Cross (text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10) and Unicef (text JAPAN to 864233). Tourism reps were also in attendance: whole swaths of the country were untouched by the earthquakes or tsunami, and tourist dollars are needed to help the northeast recover.

The big-ticket attractions were speakers like Samantha Brown (star of over a decade’s worth of shows on the Travel Channel), Rick Steves ( who has an eponymous series of books and TV shows about traveling to Europe, as well as a blog, Facebook page, Twitter account and regular column), and actor-turned-travel-writer Andrew McCarthy. I missed Brown, couldn’t find a seat for Steves (the surprising rock star of this industry), but was lucky to hear McCarthy’s entire talk, moderated by L.A. Times’ travel writer Christopher Reynolds.

McCarthy starred in approximately 1/3 of the most popular movies that came out when I was in high school, but has now built a successful career as a freelancer for some of the biggest travel magazines in America. (Note: building a film career is a great way to get National Geographic Traveler to take your pitch.) After many years of traveling and writing, he’s stumped by places that are more lovely than actually interesting to write about, but still encourages travel to “allow a place to change you for the better.”

And speaking of change for the better, I enjoyed a warm reception from tourism bureaus reps for Taiwan, Israel, India, Mongolia, Colombia and the South Pacific island nation of Tonga. At these booths, when I presented myself as a travel blogger, stated my niche, general readership, and desire to see these countries for myself and write about them, all seemed inquisitive and receptive to the idea of my joining familiarization (fam) trips to these countries in the future; several expressed a desire to know more about travel blogs in general.

This face time was incredibly valuable, as some tourism bureau reps consider the influence of travel bloggers difficult to quantify and we’re sometimes dismissed out of hand via email. In an effort to spread the good word about travel blogs — and keep learning about the industry — I’m looking forward to more travel shows in the future.

Travels With Two

Ojai's Topa Topa Mountains

After a recent weekend in the small Southern California town of Ojai, I was excited to learn that the area’s long been a shooting location for Hollywood movies.

Maybe the film crews come for the soaring mountains, the almost-endless valleys, the acres of orange groves, the gurgling streams, the antique trains, the soft, dreamy color palette, the peace and quiet…or all of the above.

Just outside of town, wind your way north up the 33. As the Topa Topas grow higher and closer, you’ll find yourselves in hiking and waterfall country. A rushing creek burbles over smooth stones between jagged canyon walls that bake in glittering sun or cool off in the fringed shade of pepper trees and dry-brush natives; the Old West landscape here inspired D.W. Griffith in 1915 for his silent/racist epic, Birth of a Nation. Up here we were excited to discover plenty of alone time and the dramatic Rose Falls, a spectacular 300-foot waterfall that, in late February, rushed straight and strong off of snow-capped mountains.

Rose Valley and Rose Falls, above Ojai off the 33 heading north

Back down on Main Street, the creation of one of Ojai’s founding fathers, glass magnate Edward Libbey, you can escape the rush of the big city along a 1917 porticoed shopping arcade, a period post office and movie theater, and a sprawling park built around an ornate fountain. A few blocks away, the 2010 movie Easy A was shot at Ojai’s Spanish-style Nordhoff High School; the German “Nordhoff” was Ojai’s original name, changed during World War II in a stroke of pro-American public relations.

In and around Ojai's downtown

For a less architectural view, take a left off Main venture up to Meditation Mount (10340 Reeves Road). Here amongst the wild rabbits and purple cacti, take a deep breath as fluffy clouds drift by the rocky peaks, casting shadows on the rolling orchard hills. The Mount stood in for Shangri-La in 1937′s Lost Horizon, and since 1971 has been home to a spiritual center and meandering hilltop garden.

Meditation Mount

Most recently, the Ojai Valley and the nearby town of Fillmore were locations for the upcoming movie Water for Elephants. In a daring leap of cross-Waldman promotion, I’m pleased to mention that the national poster campaign for this movie was created by Adam’s company, The Refinery.

The circus drama, based on a bestseller by Sara Gruen, is set largely on a Depression-era train provided by the Fillmore & Western Railway Co. The Railway’s collection of antique trains, depots and props have made appearances in many movies (e.g., Inception and Unstoppable), but the company also specializes in scenic jaunts between the small Ojai-adjacent towns of Fillmore and Santa Paula.

Our experience with the Murder Mystery Dinner Theater was, sadly, less than romantic. The actors in our western-themed evening were pretty hilarious, but after a while, we felt our faces straining with the effort of smiling at energetically-encouraged audience participation. For the three-hour evening, we were seated at a table with slightly humorless strangers, and found the three-course meat-and-potatoes meal largely inedible; we had higher hopes for an event that costs about $90 per person. We loved the train itself and its vintage 1930s details, though, and were left wishing that we’d at least had a chance to see some scenery out of the windows.

Fillmore and Western Railway Co.'s Stargazer Express and the train depot in Santa Paula

You might want to instead try a daytime, weekend excursion; you could sit side-by-side and watch the countryside unfold, then poke around Santa Paula’s historic downtown ($24 US per adult). Once back at the depot in Fillmore, right across the train tracks you’ll find the Geissinger Winery tasting room in an old converted warehouse.

Back in the heart of Ojai, fields of fruit trees, farm houses and brushy native plants are surrounded by the huge, slanted peaks of the Topa Topas; just about every day at sunset, the light hits the mountains just so…and creates a glowing, romantic phenomenon known as the Pink Moment.

A Pink Moment in the Topatopa Mountains, an Ojai sunset phenomenon

Some folks feel this is the greatest show in town and make a regular event of toasting it with locally-made rosés and cocktails of the same name. The Pink Moment and the whole Ojai area are just waiting to be savored — and seen.

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See also
Indulge in a Bit of Ojai
The Ojai Valley

Travels With Two