noplasticshowers

Ah nostalgia. I stayed here at the Hotel California for my brother’s wedding about fifty trillion years ago. We had a great time. Apparently that had nothing to do with this hotel.

This week we’re doing the obligatory college tour extravaganza, visiting 9 colleges and 5 cities in 8 days. LA:Palo Alto:Chicago:Minneapolis:Boston.

“Relax,” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!”

Lemme outta here! No longer a fan.

Plastic shower? Yep.

This is a plastic shower. It is plasticy.

Shower on a tub. Nice tiles though.

Looking up, there is a skylight.

Heaven is escaping from the plastic shower.

Is that the ocean I hear or is that Ocean Avenue? Given the room assignments we got to pick from, probably the latter.

The bedroom is small, the TV is big, the color is yellow, the closets fit a “half dead guy” (either parsing with a preference toward the half body), the sheets are not clean enough, the son gets a cot. Blech. One lowly shower head for the Hotel California. What was I thinking?

Plus their wireless internet really sucks (as bad as Patagonia at the tip of South America). And on day two they forgot to clean the room.

The bed room is situated very close to Ocean Avenue.

Cot equals suck. Jack says the couch is better.

But there is the Pacific ocean. And Chez Jay across the street is a great place for dinner. All in all, day one of the extravaganza was ok if you don’t count the hotel.

If you are coming to Santa Monica, stay at the Georgian!

On the mixology front, things are looking a bit dated in Santa Monica. I had an interesting concoction at the LACMA (which has a real bar hidden away between contemporary and modern. But even at Jiraffe, where Rafael Lunetta prepared a world class meal, the fallback (a Negroni) was all I could scrape up. There must me good mixology in LA, I just haven’t found it yet. I think the people are spending all of their lucre on cars instead of liquor.

Here is the recipe for Halfway to Havana from the LACMA:
Dark rum classico (10 years) [I would use eclipse] 1.5 oz
Amaro Montenegro 0.5oz
Sweet Vermouth 0.5oz
Orange bitters (Fee brothers west indian orange)