A Christmas Detour

December 2016

I don’t remember how this happened – but we planned a day out that Mary couldn’t do with us. She went to see The King and I with her family. We missed her! We are a team that has gotten together once a week for ten years and now we were a woman down. Felt kinda weird.

Gaia alerted us to an app for our phones called Detour. Detour offers “immersive guided audio tours” all around the world. We downloaded the app and through a bit of trial and error we were all able to sync our phones – put on the headphones – and start our “guided” tour. We chose Downtown: Gateway to the City of Angels. We started our tour at Union Station, wandered up through Olvera Street, into Chinatown and finished at Philippe’s. Other than the occasional frustration trying to get the tours to sync (we sync so that only one of us has to shell out the whopping $5 for the tour), we can’t recommend these tours highly enough. They are narrated by local residents, in this case by a Los Angeles journalist, and feature local stories, stops at out-of-the-way places, interesting background music and sounds, and a guarantee you will learn something new.

For example, have you ever heard of the mural America Tropical?

Stops Along the Detour

The Ceiling of Union Station
Gateway to Chinatown
Lunch

Downtown Library Tour

After our walking tour we drove to LA Live to park our car and walked over to the Los Angeles Public Library. The library offers free guided tours (with a live docent!) almost every day. I could talk a little bit about how great this building is, and how great libraries are, but I’ll save my breath and recommend The Library Book by Susan Orlean. I gave it five stars which I so rarely do! And definitely do the tour!

After our library tour we killed a little time at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. We did little shopping at their clothing store and gift store and we toured the Menswear exhibit in the museum there.

Finishing the Day at LA Live

As the sun set we sat atop Los Angeles at the new-ish Marriot for dinner and drinks before a show at the Nokia Theater. The view was beautiful, the drinks refreshing, the food tasty and we tried not to miss our friend Mary. After dinner we rocked out, sort of, to the tunes of the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Gaia even got us VIP tickets for free food and drinks.