Are You Reeling from the Year? 2016

My fourth quarter travel update. Brief blurbs of bouncing around in Brooklyn, Tucson, San Diego, and Dana Point.

Always make a point of going away. Make five points.

Brooklyn’s Green Streets

Who needs Central when you have Prospect Park?

My son lives there now. He has to. He is 23, a liberal arts college graduate and a musician. He and others like him have simply refashioned Brooklyn to provide the creature comforts of their cozy suburban upbringing. A city that is hundreds of years old, Brooklyn has gone from smoking hot factories to smoking hot girls in yoga outfits.  And those factories have been turned into hip hotels, restaurants, bowling alleys and fitness centers. Much has been said about the Brooklyn bubble, with good reason.  Residents have their organic hamburger shops. Their Trader Joe’s is housed in a magnificent bank building. They eat and travel green, they walk until their Fitbit count explodes, they travel on the magic, ancient subway, or they grab a bike and spin around on the miles and miles of designated traffic lanes.  Cars, shmars. They drop in at a Buddhist temple for a morning meditation and then drink a divinely created latte with a leaf or a heart on top. They live in brownstones on tree-lined streets, their restaurants provide bottled water to the table and their restrooms are filled with Mrs. Meyers organic hand soaps. They enjoy quiet. 

And just 30 minutes away on an island off the coast awaits the biggest, craziest most glamourous city in the world.  They can work there and play there but they go home to the city that allows you to sleep, Brooklyn.

Sleep here

Work and play here

Home-coming Tucson

Sunrise at hacienda It's Five O'Clock Somewhere, Rio Rico 

 

Stopping first at the stunning "It's Five O' Clock Somewhere" hacienda my in-laws own in Rio Rico, I had a brief and welcome hit of Tucson for a college homecoming. We stayed at a hotel just six streets south of the exact block where I grew up, allowing me the view that I woke up to every day of my childhood. The Catalina Mountains in all of their glory. My mother, a Mainer wrested from her ocean view and thrust into the desert years ago concluded that the mountains change as much as the ocean does. She meant the light. They can be baby blanket blue and they can be midnight blue in the same day, sometimes the same hour. They can be hit by a furnace blast of heat and appear to waver; they can be hit by lightning and be as starkly exposed as an actor under a spotlight. Their caps can be snow packed or dry as a skull. 

Ever changing Catalinas.

I went for an early morning run through the municipally owned Reid Park golf course, continuing a long history of fighting City Hall. if you go early enough you don’t get caught. But as the sun rose, so did a parks official to reprimand me for my behavior. He told me if I did it again he would shoot me with a paintball gun. At least he had the decency to ask me what color I’d like.  The Wild West is still alive.

These look like running paths to me.

And I could run on like the hot enchilada sauce on my plate about the food of the gods there. But I won’t. I will just tell you that my four meals at Micha’s, El Minuto, Molina's Midway and El Charro exceeded in flavor and heat anything I am likely to eat until I return.

With Margie and Megan. One meal more dazzling than the next.

 San Diego—No Worries

Conference attendees in San Diego

San Diego swings every time and never misses—this city has the consistency of Roger Federer. Ever warm, ever lovely, ever velvety air, the glorious harbor, the perfectly designed Coronado bridge, the whimsical Dole banana boat docked offshore, the freshest most tender calamari, the vigor and health exuded by people who live outdoors, the yummy goodness of Rubio’s fish tacos, the powerful solidity of the USS Midway in the harbor.

San Diego Cool

Dear Monarch Bay Resort at Dana Point, CA

From top to bottom

You look so nice and you try so hard but you’ve been undone by your architect.  What is your beautiful lobby doing on the sixth floor? Forcing your guests to go on a treasure hunt for their rooms?  There is a north and south wing but finding out which is which is like asking the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. Our room was indeed spacious and deluxe. But it was a search every time. How are we supposed to get back to the lobby?  We can see it but not reach it. You’re like an impenetrable fortress. You need to hire Rapunzel.  Because getting around there is hairy.

Great running

By the sea

You have a spectacular front yard though—the Pacific Ocean.  I loved my morning runs.

Your spa was nice and your services were fine. And dinner was largely yummy. I ate as much fish as a small Catholic nation on a Friday.  And the Kung Pao Brussels sprouts were magnifico.

You did a heck of a job with poolside service. Offering frozen grapes as a refreshing snack? Who does this? Even my well traveled companion had never seen it.  They rocked.

I liked my turn down and my slippers by the bedside. I liked the fireplace on the patio for a cozy morning read, but why does it take so long for maintenance to come and light it?

Breakfast by the fireplace

I’ll give you some stars, but they’ll be a little dull and tarnished, by no means bright and shiny.

And do tell us when you see to your maze management.  I won’t hold my breath because it would require you sending us a sign.

Love, Margo

To my readers—I realize that complaining about a stay at an oceanfront resort is haughty, elitist and one percenty.  But hey, it’s 2017 and we might as well get used to it.