Cross Country – 7

From the scenic to the city, our next stop was the garish Las Vegas. We had spent several nights there on our honeymoon and had been back, but, it had been years. The general consensus was that the two nights we spent there would do us for another 20 years.

We stayed at The Bellagio, which is a lovely hotel with the beautiful Chihuly ceiling, gardens, fountains, great location on The Strip, and fabulous cheese danish at the Bellagio Patisserie. However, the hotel is huge, so, just walking to the entrance from the room was like taking a hike. We had a lovely large room with a view of The Strip, including The Eiffel Tower, Because of its popularity there was always a steady stream of people walking through the lobby and taking pictures in the garden and enjoying the ambience of the hotel. We did have dinner in their contemporary restaurant Lago, but, we both agreed it was a “get them in, get them out fast” kind of experience even though we had a late reservation, 9:00 p.m., seated at 9:20 p.m.

We did get to see The Blue Man Group, who were generally quite entertaining. The show was at The Luxor with the overdone Egyptian decor and a great Mexican restaurant, Diablo’s Cantina.

From Las Vegas to even hotter Palm Springs for a two-night stay at the Mission Hills Country Club at Rancho Mirage. This stay gave us a chance to slow down and do not much other than cruise Palm Springs, note the acres of wind turbines and have dinner at the country club.

Then it was on to Los Angeles, where Steve and I met, dated forever and then finally got married in May of 1977. In Los Angeles we stayed at the Montrose West Hollywood, Room 306. Why is Room 306 important? Read on. . .before Steve and I got married, we lived in the same building, different apartments (long story). The Montrose West Hollywood was originally the apartment building where Steve and I lived! It was later converted to a hotel. Apartment 306 was my apartment, so, I specifically asked for the room as that had been my studio apartment when I lived there! Of course, there had been changes and updates, but, it was still my apartment.

We are both quite familiar with Los Angeles; me, because I lived in so many different places when I was there! We usually went to the same restaurants when we visited, but, as most of them are now gone, we tried new places. We had dinner downtown one night at The Perch, which is located atop an office building. Driving downtown was a nightmare with the traffic. Then we had dinner at Musso and Frank’s, which for you Bosch watchers on Netflix will know that West Hollywood restaurant is one frequently featured on the show. We also had lunch with Steve’s cousin, GP, in a restaurant at Marina del Rey. GP is a musician, and, one of his claims to fame is that he received the outstanding musician award at UCLA with the award being presented by Frank Sinatra himself! We were there all those years ago when we lived in LA, so, we can vouch that it really happened!

The saddest thing about Los Angeles was the number of homeless on the streets and the tents and garbage scattered about the city. The only locale where none of that was present was Beverly Hills.