Stop Over in Los Angeles

On the way home from the fiber vacation, I had to stop in Los Angeles for work.

We made great time to downtown Los Angeles without too many traffic stops and checked into the Doubletree downtown.  This is the same hotel that my brother got married in.  The garden terrace is beautiful.

We met up with my brother for dinner in Little Tokyo which was a couple blocks from the hotel.

We ate at Daikokuya and had their famous ramen bowl.  There were a bunch of restaurants on the block but only this one had people waiting outside the door.

Their specialty is the daikoku ramen which we all had.

I also added some spicy tuna sushi while the other had the combo plates with a smaller entree.

The broth was super rich but the ramen was great.  There is a whole egg in the noodle broth, but it had a custard yolk and was very interesting.

Back at the hotel, I saw this in the gift shop.  It was a bit too steep to purchase.

Stay at the Berkeley Marina

I was lucky enough to stay at the Doubletree at the Berkeley Marina this time on this trip up north.  The last time I had reservations at this hotel, the power was out when we arrived and there was no way to check in and we were moved to their sister property at the Oakland airport.

The hotel is pretty old and very drafty.  It was cold and rainy while I was there and I had to have the heat on the entire time I was there.

The view was very nice though from my small balcony.

Southern California Road Trip

I did a southern California road trip for work and went around in a big circle starting from home and heading east, then north, west, and finally south.

Stayed at the DoubleTree which has my aesthetics.

Hit a few restaurants along the way - this one at a Pho place that only took cash.  My co-pilot got the "big" bowl.

And I got the smaller one.

We were looking for another restaurant, but could not find it so we ended up at this one.

We passed Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive as we headed up for a meeting at the Federal Building.

Traffic was pretty bad when it takes almost two hours from Pasadena to Beverly Hills.

Up in Mojave, we got a tip to Anthony's Grill where we had mexican fast food.  The tacos were delicious and I was impressed by the wall of hot sauce.

We also hit the Red Lobster next to the hotel and had drinks.  Mine share of liquor was transferred to his drink.  Cute how they include that.

Productive trip for work and good food, good company especially for those long hours in the car and a change in the weather with rain.