Saint Monica and her Sun Worshippers

Saint of the Sun

When I picked up the rental car at LAX I learned that the travel agency had listed my arrival time as 11:59 p.m. I arrived at 11 a.m. Budget-Guy told me I was 12 hours early and that all they had left were minivans.

A minivan is not the car to have for driving on the LA freeways, parking in Beverly Hills at your friend’s house, and certainly not the car to pull up in at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. The valet staff grimaced their way through welcoming me as a guest and whisked away the offensive car.

I’d never spent more than a few hours in Santa Monica, but this time I had enough exposure to warrant a 50 SPF sunscreen.

From the balcony

Santa Monica is just raw California at its finest, the massive beach, the boardwalk, the ferris wheel, the ocean’s roar, the sunset and the moonrise, walkable shopping and restaurants.

The gulls make eye contact

Santa Monica is healthy in extremis. Try to find an egg yolk at breakfast, try to find bacon made from ham, pancakes without spelt and flax, and an avocado that is not topped by a nest of sprouts.

More like "Mother of God"

At dinners we managed to evade healthy eating. At the Blue Plate Oysterette I found my cherished fried calamari and clam chowder made with whole milk instead of oat milk. The restaurant tagline is where Santa Monica meets New England.  New England doesn’t meet Santa Monica though. Perhaps this explains the outrageous price of Maine lobster, knowing full well the crustacean doesn't like the trip out West one bit.

The second night we ate at Blue Plate Taco, which makes no claim to meeting Mexico, but does claim to having "fresh and light beachside Mexican cuisine."  Mexican "cuisine" should never be light. I was sure there wasn’t a teaspoon of lard in the place.

Mostly we just molted and melted by the pool, or in our ocean view room with a balcony. One morning I ran and one morning I took a yoga class, this was the sole expenditure of energy.

A veritable highway for runners

But the morning run along Strand Beach Paths in Santa Monica ranks high, high among the all time greats. It was like a super highway! Wider than River Road in Bethesda. It’s flat. It’s warm, it’s terribly interesting. I saw dancers, gymnasts, and a real US Army Boot Camp on Muscle Beach, which proclaims itself the “Birthplace of the Physical Fitness Boon of the Twentieth Century.”

Beverly Hills grass--it's perfect

The service that should be afforded a platinum American Express card member at Fairmont Miramar was a bit tarnished. The room had not been cleaned at 4:30 p.m., they gave us a $100 resort credit to be used at the spa and on merchandise, but there were no spa appointments and no merch. The phone started ringing at 7 a.m. and wouldn’t let up, the K-pods hadn't been replenished, the charming, bubbly, Ritalin-filled waiter took almost an hour to get us breakfast. But at the end of our stay enter Manager Mike, with the calm of a Buddha and the placidity of a frozen lake, he made everything right for us.

A tower on Tower Grove

What is this winged lion protecting?

I thought I had exhausted all of the running routes in Judy’s Beverly Hills neighborhood. After all how much wealth and beauty can you stand? More is the answer. I crossed Benedict Canyon Road and headed up Tower Road. And in true nomen est omen fashion the houses there towered above the rest. Much neon classical architecture. Really, what are statues of a winged lion and Venus and doing next to a three car garage? Looked more like the Carthenonon.

Twin Mercedes on a budget--Tower Road, BH

On the last night Judy and I ate at Il Piccolino in West Hollywood. The last time I ate there I saw Jimmy Smits and Eric Idle at one table, Jane Fonda and her family at another, and then Halle Berry came along with her perfect bone structure, and squeezed into the table next to ours. This time we didn't get the same depth of celebrity viewing, although Judy spotted some big dogs in "the" industry. It was still excellent spectator sport--a table of Russian oligarchs celebrating an anniversary, to the left and right of us blinding diamonds and jewels, perfect coifs, the highest end accessories.

Breakfast with Siri Hari Angleton

I also got to see a dear friend I grew up with in Tucson for breakfast at the luxe Peninsula Hotel. That's where I had blueberry pancakes with spelt in them.

Again, I ask. What do I always ask? Why doesn’t everyone just live in California?