The Christmas Adventure Begins

Thursday

We’re off! To avoid Boston (or other east coast cities) and the possibility of getting snowed in, we are getting to Ireland via Los Angeles. (Yes, it happens – on our last trip to Ireland for Christmas, pre-pandemic, we got stuck at the Logan Hilton in Boston for four days because of a massive snowstorm.) So today we flew to LAX to spend a night in California before our non-stop flight to Dublin tomorrow night. The American Airlines flight was uneventful and on-time, and we were in our one-day car rental by 1:00 pm.

Funny story about the flight. We decided to invest in Tile luggage tags which track where your luggage is. We checked three bags, each with a Tile device in it. At the airport in Phoenix, the Tile app on my phone showed all three bags also at Phoenix Airport. So far, so good. Once in flight, I checked again. Two bags tracked as “nearby”, meaning they were on the plane. The third bag was “location unknown”, last seen at Phoenix Airport. It was my big bag that was “location unknown”. I spent the hour flight figuring out what I was going to do with no clothes on a three week trip to Dingle. We landed. All three bags were on the luggage carousal. And the Tile app saw it now too. No idea why it didn’t know it was on the plane with us.

Once in the car, we drove the 10 miles (or so) to Venice Beach and found our hotel. Too early to check in, so we drove the mile or so down Washington Blvd to the beach. We parked and had a look around and had a nice little lunch at Mercedes Grill right by the beach. Draft Pacifico beer! After lunch we walked on the pier before heading to the hotel.

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After our walk we drove around Venice Beach a bit. We saw Abbot Kinney, a famous funky street with lots of interesting businesses. And we drove through some interesting neighborhoods. There are lots of scooters and skateboards in Venice Beach. Our hotel, the Kinney, has a garage which is nice. We checked in and the room was delightful. No view, but big and comfortable, and the bed and pillows were perfect.

For dinner we walked ten minutes down Washington Boulevard to 26 Beach. Funky and good. (Funky seems to be the norm in Venice Beach). Excellent gin gimlet. Nice bottle of wine. Excellent chicken wings for an appetizer. We ate three before I took the picture. No pictures of the mains. Too anxious to eat, I guess. I had very good Greek lamb chops (excellently served rare) while Elaine a turkey chipotle burger with poblano peppers. No desserts. We walked back to the hotel and went to bed.

See you after we land in Dublin on Saturday.