One final day in the Bay Area and I'm spending it at the beach, my favorite place. I'm between Moss Beach and Half Moon Bay, about 25 miles, give or take, south of San Francisco on Highway 1.

The weather is perfect. Sunny, about 60 degrees. Spent a good part of the morning walking the waterfront, from just south of Moss Beach at Mavericks, one of the premier surfing spots in the continental U.S., heading to Half Moon Bay itself, about six miles south.

It's an easy thing to do, and I'd recommend it highly, especially if you've been to San Francisco a lot and are looking for something off the beaten path.

There are increasing numbers of places to stay... and they range from the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay to inns along the sea, including Karen Brown's Sea Cove Inn in Moss Beach. Brown is a respected author of several travel books on lodging. Her inn certainly deserves to be included in her own writings.

There are more places, though. Try Princeton by the Sea or check the lodging in Miramar... two communities between the centers of Moss Beach and Half Moon Bay. You'll be right on the coast... and I mean RIGHT on the water in some cases, within range of some nice food and places to wander... and increasingly interesting shopping, if you can't stand being away from it. You won't be paying as much to stay here either.

The beach here is cozy, and it's quiet. And it's a nice break.

It's a lovely drive north into the city, if you want to do that. Or, you can cross Highway 92 and head south to Palo Alto and Stanford or to San Jose. Pretty easy access to all. Best part, you get to come home to the sea at night.

Wish I could, but I have to get back to work. Honest.

One more place to visit in the valley, if you want to keep the architecture thing going. Who wouldn't? It's all too bizarre.

The Quixote Winery, on the Silverado Trail in Napa, opened to the public this year. There are no straight lines, there are golden turrets, there is color everywhere. You can read its history on its Web site. Note the history of its architect, especially. Who cares what the wine tastes like?

I'll tell you, I finished the day Saturday just the way I like to finish days in this wine country north of San Francisco Bay ... sitting outside in the later afternoon sun, having some wine with a bunch of friends who go way back, heading off to a casual dinner later on with no change of clothes required and then spending the rest of the evening simply hanging out, talking.

Nice idea of a vacation if you can get it. It's also, according to just about every travel study I've read lately, the way more and more of us are spending vacations ... some place easy to get to, easy to get around in, amenable to large groups of families and friends. We're increasingly taking them in bites, more like extended weekends, spending more as long as "together" is part of the equation.

The bunch of us polished off the last couple houses on the kitchen and garden tour (which, let me tell you, included a lot of living rooms and bedrooms and bathrooms ... sort of like open houses) in quick fashion in the afternoon. I wish I had photographs to include here ... but no photos were allowed, anywhere.

If they had been, I'd have loaded this post with pics of a home right out of somebody's post-modern design book for homes that, well, I don't know ... you just might not want to come home to. For me, there was too much glass, too much metal, too muck stark and a living room ceiling in its great room that would rival any office building foyer I could think of. And, man, way, way, way up there!

There's a rose maze out back at this place, a huge, interior wall of glass that looks out onto a (yes, again) lap pool and a two-acre pond. There are two tennis courts here, and a bocci ball court. But what got me were what looked like acres of gravel and stone surrounding the house. No lawn, no decorative grasses, nothing really indigenous, nothing, but acres of stone. With tree after tree, each planted in its own tiny circle of a break from that stone, in perfect rows ... everywhere.

Everything was perfect.

Except, in the pond, where there were swimming two of the biggest swans I'd ever seen. I stood outside for a while, watching them. Then they began swimming my way. They got bigger. And bigger.

I don't do monstrous birds. We left.

The home is in Napa, off the road so you can't see it. If I find a link to anything about it, I'll post it. It's on Vichy Avenue. Perhaps that accounts for its structural accountability.

Our break came at the Trefethen Family Vineyards in Napa. The present winery dates from 1973, the original property as winery from 1886 and called, then, Eshcol.

The winery says "Trefethen has never purchased a single outside grape." In other words, what you drink, comes from what you see.

Shannon Walli, a self-described Southern California girl, poured for us in the reserve room (a beautiful space to sit, let me tell you).

She poured some Pinot: "We make the very best Pino."
You do? What about Oregon?
"That's very good Pinot."
Better?
"We pour the best Pinot in California."
Ah. She passed the test, according to me. Give credit where credit is due. And we hadn't even told her we were visitors from the north.
And - she even gave me a hug in the parking lot.
That's good service.

Dinner was at The Boon Fly Café, in Napa, in the Carneros area and part of a big complex called The Carneros Inn. Nice, small, very casual place, worth a visit. At the very least to fight over the beer battered sweet onion rings. I think we had three orders. Maybe it was four.

Regardless, those and a nicely done apple crumble tart finished off the day.

I like this.

Closing in on 90 degrees. This ain't no place like home.

The third house is a wide-open-inside number, Asian influences, in Napa itself. I like the description: "30 tons of rocks and boulders were hand-selected for lichen and moss to be the 'bones' of the garden design."
Jeeze I'd like to be the lucky lichen that lives here.

(By the way, it's too bad the tour guide book isn't online somewhere ... at least I can't find it. Some nice recipes are included with the description of each home. We understand that valley chefs are assigned to each home and provide a taste of their wares for visitors. Missed them at our first stop ... apparently we arrived during a hand-off period. At the next two stops, we had Ahi Poke Salad in Cucumber Chips from Marcos Uribe of Celadon and My Mother's Strawberry Shortcake from Bob Hurley of Hurley's Restaurant & Bar.)

The shortcake was perfect for staring at ANOTHER lap pool AND a potted palm tree (we're talking a three-people-to-lift-it-sized pot) in the middle of the dining room table. "Hi mom! Is that you over there? Call me! Nice dinner!)

Most exciting adventure here ... one of us locked the car keys in the trunk of one of our cars. Oops. It's the trunk with the chilled wine. Oops.

Continuing the reports from Saturday afternoon -- by the time we get to the second house in St. Helena, the temp is climbing ... mid 80s. I am the only one sweating. What a nice feeling.

This place is a combination of a shack built in the 1800s, another portion of stone built years later and a third structure finished in 2004. It's the one house you can actually read about in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Not bad.

More outdoor dining ... (hint, try a yeast tablet, someone tells me, before dinner and the mosquitoes won't touch you... "neither will anybody else," a friend said.)

More lap pools. What's with lap pools?

My favorite line from this home's desciption in the official tour booklet is this: "The new owners... consider it a work in progress."

Really. The folks who own the first house we saw have the same consideration of theirs. Hmmm... I'd love to know their definitions of progress.

Onward.

Pardon the interruption in the filing of these dispatches from events on Saturday, but this is big news down here and just in - early Sunday morning.

If you're in the Bay Area now or intend to come down here soon, heads up.

Overnight Saturday night a tanker truck fire literally melted part of an East Bay freeway, destroying nearly 250 yards of it and making traffic a huge mess - one that likely won't go away soon.

Check it out ... and avoid, most likely for months.

And note this paragraph from a San Fransico Chronicle early report on the fire: "The tanker, which was traveling from I-80 full of vehicle-ready gasoline, seems to have disappeared. One Caltrans worker at the scene held up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart to describe how big the tanker is now."

Important story. Keep abreast if you have plans here, expecially if it involves travel in and out of the Oakland airport.

You need to see this place ... Castello di Amorosa
It's close to Calistoga near the top of Napa Valley. It is enormous. Fifty, count 'em, fifty of my houses would fit inside this place. Just read about it and weep ... for a variety of reasons.

Hey ... it fits here. Maybe it's a tad larger than some of the homes, wineries, caves I've seen since I arrived. But whoever said valley denizens don't have a touch of the Disney about them just isn't paying attention ... or has over-imbibed on ice wine.

Pondering the appearance of a turret that appears to have been shot off in some pitched battle came this response from the front seat: "Of course, as we all know, there were so many English civil wars fought in the Napa Valley. How foolish of me..."

A little torture after dinner? Yes, there is a dungeon, and there are devices. Enjoy!

It's 1 p.m.in the Napa Valley. It's 82 degrees. What's the temp in Seattle, somebody?

Just finished seeing two of the five homes on the tour ... both of them in St. Helena.

First place we saw sits in a Zinfandel field and is of Tuscan design, they tell us. Finished just last year. I suspect that may be un-Tuscan, considering most of Tuscany's homes of similar ilk were built a few years earlier, wouldn't you agree?

Its kitchen is pretty much as large as the main floor of my house. Has a few things mine doesn't ... like the island that came from a nunnery and an in-kitchen, wood-fired bread oven. Oh, and the wine glass washer and the hand-painted wall art.

I helped a gentleman, bent over at the bread oven, who was trying to translate the Italian painted in a arc over the oven's opening.

"It looks like it says pizza oven from hell," he, um, surmised, loudly.

No, I replied,. it reads hot bread, good wine and best friends.

"Well, where are they?" he asked. I moved on.

Take aways? The glass cupboards built over windows, allowing you to see your dishes - and your significant other using the lap pool outside.

The house next door, on which many commented, as they were leaving, looked much nicer and more suited to the valley.

Oh ... and there was the woman who walked by with the comment of the moment: "Okay,":she stated to her friends: "One more house and we get a drink."

We all decided to adopt the same stance.
On to house number two.

(One more item: To see most of these houses, you're required to remove your shoes. I would imagine, staring at lots and lots of bare feet, that there is enough money in pedicures here to pay for a kitchen remodel.)

Here we are in the Napa Valley.

Just had a little breakfast at the Lakeside Grill in Yountville. It's attached to Vintner's golf club. A bunch of us have been sitting outside and watching folks hit off the first tee. Mostly grounders, if that's what they're called, in golf. I, frankly, would have thrown the ball if I were a couple of the characters we're watching. Then again, I don't golf. THAT would be a show.

Two things are going on in the valley today ... the NFL draft, which is causing tremendous, raucous behavior in the club house, on the part of some patrons. And, the 10th anniversary of the Kitchens in the Vineyard tour. I'm skipping the draft to check out the places I'll never be able to afford. Wouldn't you?

Proceeds go to Music in the Vineyards 13th Napa Valley Chamber Festival in August - an event you can still attend.

(Somebody iin the front seat just said there's also a symphony here and that he heard it play backup to Wynonna Judd recently at the Lincoln Center, removated a couple years back, its home. Worth checking out - well, I'm sure Winona is, but the symphony, too.)

The tour started at 9:30 this morning and runs until 4:30 this afternoon. We're just a little late, but it doesn't matter. I think we're on valley time ... which I suspect has something to do with wine consumption.

In that respect, we are prepared. We have at least one designated driver, and, as a friend of mine announced at breakfast: "I have two bottles of Chardonnay in my trunk in a cooler."

My friend Robert announced, from the front seat, again: "We're prepared for any emergency here in Napa Valley."

Two things about the San Francisco airport you should know.
Near the exit at the United Terminal is a sign that says Meeting Place. First time I've seen that. Makes it convenient for humans.

Near baggage collection, there's another sign: Animal Relief Area.

First time I've seen that, too. Makes it convenient for animals, don't you think? Unless it has something to do with fund raising.

I was a little worried that I'd be all alone at Sea-Tac this morning ... somewhere around 4 a.m. Me, the laptop, no free wi-fi, the phone card, my book, my three ounces of hair gel.

Nope. Try this on for size. Thirty people waiting to order some kind of coffee at the Starbucks line ... another 10 of them, having ordered, waiting for their drinks.

Twenty-eight in line for bagels at another open shop.

So much for any thoughts I had of deftly describing an abandoned airport, about to wake up. (That would be the airport, not me.)

Ten minutes and the plane boards for San Francisco and a weekend trip. Off to the Napa Valley for, believe it or not, a repeat of the first-ever online dispatches we did for Travel several years ago.

That may excite some of you. Right now, however, I pretty much wish I had the gumption to cut to the front of the coffee line.

My favorite moment of the morning came on the subway out to the North Terminal.
A sleepy woman blurted out to everybody in earshot: "Is there coffee where we're going?"

A few food thoughts.

I ask everybody, everywhere I go ... except the hotel concierge (bring on those cards and letters) about food.
I ask people eating and working in restaurants where I eat (in places I like) where else they eat. I consult newspaper sites online. Every newspaper in every town, not just mainstream. I look for reviews from people who get paid to do it at newspapers I trust.
And I ask friends and friends of friends.

And I get lists and lists.
Here are a few from LA.

I love notes like this one I received from an LA pal before I arrived.

"OK, here are the best places to eat besides my house:
In Chinatown, Philippe's, which is a French dip place.
For burgers, there's Fat Burger, the original Tommy's and Pink's hot dogs. Of course, In 'n' Out Burger.
Olvera Street - La Golondrina
Better Mexican food: Across from Grand Central Market: Ye Olde Taco House (yes, that's right)
Better Mexican food: La Serenata de Garibaldi (East LA, Santa Monica, West LA)
OK Mexican food but with killer margarita's: El Coyote
Really great downtown food: Water Grill (fish) or Nick and Stef's (steak)
Fun food downtown: Ciudad
Comfort food downtown: Engine Co. No. 28
Chinese: Yang Chow for slippery shrimp (in Chinatown); Empress Pavilion on the weekend for dim sum (long lines); Yujean Kang in Pasadena
Best deli: Canter's in the Fairfax district; Langer's on South Alvarado (better take the Red LIne there and an armed guard, but the pastrami is worth it)
Best Armenian: Anything in my neighborhood
Best Filipino: Still looking for it.
Names everyone knows: Spago, Nobu, the Cut (good luck getting in)."

Not going to tell her that I did get into Cut, Wolfgang Puck's newest. I know I had supreme help

Another friend said she'd do anything in the world for me if, having eaten at the following, I could get the garlic sauce recipe for her.

"The cheap chicken joint of fame is Zankou. The garlic sauce remains one of the world's great mysteries. If you get there, bring me back a tub, or better yet, a nice Lebanese lady with the recipe."

I can tell you it's really good; I cannot tell you the recipe.
I would return to LA just for this. Even three different cab drivers (my sources of choice) talked about. Zankou chicken, Zankou chicken, Zankou chicken!

Another pal of mine at the LA Times told me to get to its Web site and read reviews. Her recs:

E. Baldi in Beverly Hills, Pizzeria Mozza - Melrose and Highland (owned in part by Maria Batali ... they say an osteria is to follow) and Al'Angelo on Melrose. All rave reviews. Good luck getting in at the moment. All Italian (she knows my tastes).

And those cab drivers? Hey ... ask. One lives in Glendale and said go there for great Armenian food; another lives in Korea Town and says guess what you'll find there; and the third in Little Ethiopia ... he raved.

Finally, on the way to the airport this morning, Francis Torres told me about his favorite El Salvadoran food, where to find it ... and I nearly asked him to turn the van around.

Would I stay in downtown LA if I were coming here on vacation? (Remember, I'm in LA, for the most part, attending the annual Travel editors conference, thus my reason for being smack in the center.)

With a family? Probably not ... but I might say that about a lot of cities, although I think it's true of this one especially.

On my own? Yeah - maybe. But most likely not. When I come down on vacation, I usually stay out at one of the beaches or in areas where there are more people around and more to do day AND night.

LA central is still a little too hard ... it's big, it's deserted, for the most part, after dark. Another affliction of lots of cities.

I know there are those here who wouldn't agree. Especially the denizens of this area and the folks who promote LA.

But LA's changing ... or looks as if it is. For one thing, there are lots of construction cranes (sorry, Bellevue, but a heck of a lot more than you have as you attempt to look more and more like southern Ca, from my perspective, and what LA is trying to rejuvenate). And there's lots of the detritus that comes with remodeling and restoring. There are those who praise what they see as a transformation, and others who are riled about what they say it will do to the less-fortunate and less-moneyed downtown population.

A couple of the hotel's employees said just wait. "It's going to be very different downtown in a year or two."

They're right. In a good way? I don't know. I can't judge what's good for LA. But it will be different.

I'd try it again. If you like living on edge of the cutting edge, sure, why not? In a while.

Should it surprise you that everybody and his neighbor in the business of Travel is trying to figure you out?

Your preferences, your time, your desires, your dreams.
It's why there are more spas than ever before, bigger and more lavish cruise ships, bigger and more lavish resorts, more marketing to traveling with friends and family, more weekend suggestions, more Web sites catering to every single need and whim, more "we-have-the biggest-the-most-the-fanciest-the-coolest-fill-in-the-blank-than-any-other-city-in-the-country" ... more than ever before.

Don't know about you, but it makes my head swim.

LA is no exception. I have a press kit here from the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau that would provide enough grist to fill a novel entitled "The Best and the Newest and the Most and we have it all right here in LA" (subtitled Eat Dirt, New York) and I could write it.

Want a sample?

- Noah's Ark lives at the newly expanded Skirball Cultural Center on the Westside. Really ... an ark. The center is now the biggest Jewish cultural center in North America and third biggest in the world.
- The Griffith Observatory has reopened with, among other things, the new, 200-seat Leonard Nimoy Theater and Wolfgang Puck's Café at the End of the Universe.
- You want numbers? I got numbers ... LA, the nation's second biggest city, is 467 square miles big; has 4 million people in it and 10 million in all of LA county; 47 percent of the city's population is Hispanic or Latino, far bigger than every other category; 25 million of you visited this city last year and spent about $13 billion dollars ... and you're not even the biggest industry, direct international trade is; 176 colleges and universities here; nearly 375 professional theaters ... more live theater than New York; 92,000 guest rooms and more coming, the third largest lodging market in the U.S.
- What's coming? The new, 7,100-seat Nokia Theatre in downtown LA; the return of "Angels Flight," what they call the shortest railroad in the world, running up a small hill downtown (the railroad cars have names ... Olivet and Sinai); a doubling in size of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach; the new Ray Charles Museum downtown; expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; renovation of the Mark Taper Forum; LA Live Sports and Entertainment District, a massive, massive complex ... 4 million square feet, 24-hour goings-on, opening in 2010; the nearly as massive Grand Avenue Development, across from the newish, Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall - $1.2 billion, 3.2 million square feet expected to be ready in 2011.

These guys like numbers, don't you think?
They think you will, too.

Impressed?

Yesterday, Sally Macdonald took off for the Getty Villa in Malibu and sent this to me today. Have to say, it's pretty nice having another set of hands working on this.

Here's what she said.

"If you're one of those people who run straight for the mummies and perfect-body sculptures from ancient Greece when you find yourself in a museum, you really ought to visit the Getty Villanext time you're near L.A.

The villa is a modern-day reproduction of a posh Roman country house that was buried by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D., along with Pompeii, Herculaneum and much of the rest of Italy's central coast.

It was conceived by J. Paul Getty, the megabucks oilman who died in 1976, to house the fruits of his rich-guy hobby ... a collection of 45,000 artifacts and artworks from antiquity.

The place is full of who-knew stuff: realistic portraits of 1st Century folk; works that show the roots of modern glass-blowing arts; Greek vessels that let you know, graphically, the ancients' idealism toward athletics and (ahem) sex; even a rare figure of a male harpist,, one of fewer than a dozen such renditions in existence.

The setting is not the monochromatic cement-to-terra cotta tints we're used to in archeological finds. The villa is painted and marbled in all the hues the Romans loved in their architecture ... sky-blue ceilings with brick-red walls set off by gold leaf and geometrically inlaid flooring in a rainbow of stone.

And there's a display of realistic portraits that once covered mummies in Egypt during its Roman era in the early years A.D. There's one that looks for all the world like a guy at my gym.

The villa is in Malibu, a 45-minute trip from downtown L.A., just off U.S. 405. It's closed Tuesdays, Wednesdays and major holidays. Admission is free and advance tickets are required."

Now it's my turn. I'm off to the Getty Museum itself, another part of this complex. More later.

Lest you think I'm not doing anything, I have been doing lots! I'm just withholding.

That said, I've leaned on a couple helpers (introduced earlier) to get me some stuff on places I can't pack into my 24-hour day. (Remember, I'm here to learn something at a conference, too.)

So.

This if from John Macdonald. He went off the Hollywood. I'm pretty sure he didn't land any character-acting stints. He doesn't look any different and has no residual make-up damage.

"'The icon of L.A.? Just say "Hollywood,"' baby.

The movie Mecca that went shabby 20 years ago is back ... and in the middle of a $1 billion redo. There are new stores, restaurants and huge housing developments and nightlife luring the L.A. crowd back - and all you tourists, too.

Must-see for the entertainment fan is the new Hollywood Highland complex ... a multi-story mall that has a center court replica of the huge 1916 silent D. W. Griffith movie "Intolerance."

A three-story movie-set archway frames the famous white "Hollywood" on the nearby hillside. Just steps away is the Kodak Theater, home of the annual Oscar-awards ceremony, and Grauman's Chinese Theater where you can put your hands or feet in the cement impressions of famous stars. (Mary Pickford's hands and feet really weren't that small, were they?)

Across the street, the old Paramount Theater has been redone by the Disney folks into the El Capitan Theater, keeping the old fancy filigree stone work.

And while you're having a cold treat from the adjacent, old-time ice-cream parlor, stroll the sidewalks on both sides of Hollywood Boulevard and find the star of your favorite entertainer imbedded in the sidewalk.

The easiest way to pull this whole Hollywood thing together is by taking a Red Line walking tour, and you'll learn that there are 2,334 stars on the sidewalk (the latest is Forest Whitaker, this year's Oscar-winning actor), that Mohammed Ali wouldn't let his star be walked on so it's on a wall in the new Hollywood Highland complex and other very useful bits of info."

Thank you, John.

I won't be seeing Hollywood on this trip. Glad John did it. My days of starlust and being struck by the stage are over.

Although I must confess to wondering, on a bus last night, just how far out Sunset Boulevard Norma Desmond lived. Or even where her house was. Course, then I remembered that she shot her boyfriend.

Here's more from Sally. A few of us climbed out of bed and our various sleep deprivations Saturday morning to get to LA's flower market...

"If you're thinking Los Angelenos have to be rich and/or famous to live like the beautiful people, you're thinking like someone from somewhere else.

"Take Norma Mead, who describes herself as "a glorified housewife who lives in a little house." Every week or two she packs her 13-year-old daughter Margaret Rivera into the family car and takes off for downtown LA's Flower Market. By the time they're done, they're loaded with enough blossoms to fill every room in that house with color and the perfumy scent of the season.

"Today they struggled to hold onto enormous bouquets of sunflowers, tuberoses and lilacs, which cost them less than dinner out at the local taqueria. Mead has been coming down to this industrial mart every week for "all my life and I'm 46" to pick from buckets of crispy fresh hydrangeas in every shade from sunset russet to palest dawn pink, flowering cherries or kumquats on the stem pretty much straight from the grower.

"She couldn't believe this is the second biggest wholesale flower market in the world after Holland's ... although the public is invited in from 6 a.m. to about noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for $1 admission, later in day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

"The market was started in 1913 by Japanese growers who figured they wouldn't face so much discrimination on the part of their majority white clientele if they banded together to sell their flowers, said Scott Yamabe, the general manager.
Many of the growers never came back after World War II, when they were interned, and now there are as many Hispanic names and faces as Japanese ones behind the rows of cut flowers. Prices range from $3.50 for enough sunflowers to fill an entryway to $5.50 for a single cut orchid blossom swathed in cotton to protect it until the buyer gets it home.

'"I'll probably spend $60 by the time Margaret and I get through today,'" Mead said. "'For my life, this makes me a very rich person.'"

Oh, and she has a tip for keeping those blooms fresh until she gets back.

"'Tell people to put a teaspoonful of bleach and a teaspoonful of sugar in the water and they'll last longer. I do that. But I'll be back here next week anyway.'"

Thank you, Sally and Norma.

As always, my nose was drawn first to the food and then to the flowers. How about a grilled hotdog, wrapped in bacon, spread with mayo and sauteed peppers and onions - at 7 a.m. That's my style.

I just got this from Sally Macdonald, retired Seattle Times reporter, who 's in LA with her husband John, former Travel editor at The Seattle Times. We're at the same conference.

The three of us have been doing research together. It's true. So what if Sally's first notes are from a bar:

"You can buy a shot of Macallan whiskey at Seven Grand (we didn't) for $120. Or, if the thought of spending that much on a sip or two of musty Old England, try a shot of Sheep Dip scotch from the Highlands for $9.

"Just proves the Scots know not only how to cook up some mighty special moonshine, but also how to save the tippler from drinking up the rent money."

The three of us managed to wander into the dark confines of this brand new whiskey bar on its soft, opening night, a couple nights back. So soft an opening - we were three of maybe six people there. So we sat at the bar and got to spend a grand time with Patrick Joseph Kelly, who poured us good things. He's a manager.

Spent some time, too, when Patrick was away, with Craig, a musician and bartender.

Had such a time, John and I went back the next night and no doubt became the first repeat customers in the bar's history! At least that's what we convinced Scott, yet another pourer of fine libation.

Don't miss the entryway decor, or the dioramas (the best is in the women's room)... oh, and don't miss the stairs on the way out. You'll see. Flatter us and we'll let you know the password upon entry.

515 W. Seventh Street, 213-614-0736.

8:32 p.m. Friday ... 18 travel editors and writers from around the country, escorted by the intrepid Bill Karz of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau (a brave lad), line up to get into The Standard Hotel and its rooftop bar. (Who goes to a club at 8:32 on a Friday night? Isn't that usually nap time BEFORE club time? Is this supposed to be one of those cool clubs?)

I've never been to a bar accompanied by 18 people in my life. I've never been to an LA, line-up, check-in, wrist-ban, what-do-you-look-like, where-are-those-shoes-from bar in my life. At least not that I remember.

I'd read some stuff before I came here, strictly related to clubs. Hey, I'd heard stories about Paris Hilton and behavioral problems and boyfriends and people falling stairs. I remember something about guest lists and bottle reservations.

Lemme see. How to tell you this? Most of us in this group EASILY could have been the grandparents of the rooftop bar's general population. Most likely we provided more gray hair (and color-disguised hair) than these folks had seen, live, in-person, outside their parents' cocktail parties. Their facial reactions proved it.

When I asked the woman who was snapping wristbands onto us, hospital-style, a beauty who matched my 6-foot height, if we were the oldest people EVER that she'd seen head for the roof, she focused on her work, not on me and said, "Maybe."

Comforting.

There's a pool up top of the hotel, waterbed-like pods for frolic, spectacular downtown views, dance floor. We didn't try the pool; some tried the pods. I have photographs. I really, really shouldn't show you. I saw one editor chair dancing. Not that kind. She was sitting down waving her arms.

My favorite was this Mr. Cleaver moment: three older guys turn a corner to go down some stairs from one part of the outdoor space to another. Three young women ... very young women, with long legs and long hair, come up the stairs, they nearly collide. They stare at each other ... who's in the zoo here?

The men's and women's rooms share the same wash basin. Picture it. I bent down to look through. Hey.

Most of us left at 9:42 p.m. Who goes to a bar before 9:42 on a Friday night?

It's LA; there are clubs in LA.

And it occured to me, prior to this trip, that lots of visitors most likely go clubbing in LA ... Hollywood clubs, wanna-be clubs, trust-fund clubs, petri-dish clubs, be-seen clubs, guauranteed paparazzi clubs, see clubs, straight clubs, gay clubs, ethnic clubs.

Knowing next to nothing of these clubs, I asked an expert friend, Catharine Hamm, Travel editor the Los Angeles Times, for some advice and definition. I'd read about guest lists, and bottle service, and clothes, and shoes, and cool, and shoes, and money, and shoes, etc. I knew nothing.

However, most likely because I misjudged her expertise, though she'd never ever admit it, Hamm referred me to her niece, Maridith Ramsey.

And Ramsey sent me this:
"Bottle service means that you want a table at a particularly snazzy club and agree to buy bottles of liquor for outrageous prices to mix your drinks. Like you'll buy a bottle of Grey Goose for $100 and your choice of mixers. Basically, they are saying that they don't want any cheap (I can't use the word she used, but I really like it. Think mule, or donkey.) stealing all the tables when the cool clientele will sit down and spend, spend, spend.

You get on the guest list by . . . knowing people. I don't think that there is any big secret except that you have to know the right folks. I don't."

Okay, cool, I thought. Cool.

Then aunt Catharine jumped in:
"Clothes: You should wear some. Preferably black."

And... after I asked whether or not I needed to be somebody....
"Non-Hollywood? I think it means you'll never get in."

Cool. I can deal with that. Cool.

Last night I tried it out. Lots of us tried it out...

Lunch Friday: short ribs, mac and cheese, cornbread, ocra, corn and iced tea. $6.99 at M&M Soul Food on Degnan in Leimert Park.

After lunch Friday: There are four or five floors of athletic things at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. I turn toward the back of the elevator when I go past those floors to get to my room, ignore the guilt and the sweaty people who get on and off.

I feel pretty good that my gym clothes have remained sweat free. Lighter, you know, for the trip home.

I'll tell you why people like Jackie Ryan, Ron Carter and Charmaine Jefferson make my travels a whole lot better. And Manuel who drove us to the Beverly Wilshire last night and the cab driver who took us back to the Los Angeles Athletic Club where we're staying.

It's their passion. For what they do, where they live, their goals, their families. No hesitation in speaking their minds ... or in some cases their hearts.

Sometimes it may seem as if my comrades (Kristin Jackson, Carol Pucci and Brian Cantwell) and I can get a little preachy in talking about getting out to meet people wherever you go. To do some talking, to do a lot of listening, to wonder and prowl and get lost.

I'll tell ya, it works every time. And it's why we talk about that over and over.

Ryan, her sister Mary Kimbrough and Alden Kimbrough have the Zambezi Bazaar in the Leimert Parkin LA. The park houses a couple streets of small businesses, African-American owned, just like theirs. The place is stuffed with art and artifacts and out-of-print African American books, old magazines, you name it.

Seems as if their business area, not unlike lots of others around the country, is being eyed by developers bent on developing. An area picks up, begins to draw some attention for its attractiveness and here come the condos on top and the high rents at street level. And there go all the small businesses that have sustained the area for decades. That's what Ryan will tell you, no holds barred. In the end, she says, just call it racial cleansing.

Carter is managing director for The Carter Agency out of Pasadena. He's working the Leimert Park business owners to raise their visibility and most likely their power in having a big hand in shaping the park's future. He says Leimert has the largest concentration of African-American businesses in Southern California. He walks by Eso Won Books, a popular LA fixture, recently relocated to the village. Bill Clinton has stopped in; so has Barack Obama. Gotta save these places, Carter says.

Manuel? He's originally from Ethiopia and now part of a huge Ethiopian community in LA. We talk religion, cost of living, food, family. He drives a cab now, and will soon be moving to Dallas to join his sister. Another cab job? "Oh no!" He intends to use his college degree to pursue his dreams. Maybe engineering. When we finish the ride, he thanks us for a great conversation ... and he starts laughing, because we didn't hit the big three most riders ask him about ... long-distance runners, famine and the Arc of the Covenant.

Another driver, whose name I should have written down but didn't, picked right up where Manuel left off. Only he's Armenian, from Iran, where his parents still live. He, his wife, and two children live in Glendale, amidst another huge population of new and not-so-new Armenians. And one more time we got into religion, cost of living, all over again. We talked all the way back to the hotel. And he, too, thanked us for the chance to talk.

Charmaine Jefferson is the executive director of the California African American Museum, in Exhibition Park. She dreams about doubling the size of the museum to some 80,000 square feet, expanding its offerings. The museum has about 3,500 pieces in its collection of art and artifacts. Amazingly, nearly every bit of it has been donated. There isn't the money to buy what other museums buy. That's called the acquisition fund.

She's passionate about her program, but then ask her about the old neighborhoods and about preservation of culture.

I like art, and architecture, museums and concerts and music and theme parks and monuments man-made and not. Don't get me wrong.

Jefferson, Ryan, Carter and the drivers, though, give me what I always appreciate when I travel. Just the smallest piece of feeling at home, away from home. How can you not be grateful for that?

There probably isn't a manhole cover in LA (let alone everything else) that hasn't been shot by a movie or television crew. I swear ... everybody has a story, from somebody who said films crews used their grandmother's knitting needles to somebody else who said they rented my paintings! And it seems as if every other street has some kind of sign attesting to who stood where.

Last night, lined up along a block of 7th Ave W., was a string of taxi cabs. New York taxi cabs, for a television show based in New York. Okay.

Somebody looked to be coaching a few guys on howta, sorta shrug New York.
Okay.

Tell me that wouldn't give you a start if, after you'd just arrived, ate and drank and shook hands with people and plates at a couple receptions and swore your plane ticket had said LA, that you came upon that scene. Okay.

Somewhere in my room is a bag with a large piece of meat in it - a steak, leftover from dinner last night at Cut, Wolfgang Puck's newest LA creation, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

I'm pretty sure I don't want to find the steak. At this point, it would still hurt even to look at it.

I'd read about Cut and its companion bar Sidebar. Folks here recommended the pair big time. I did some research and saw food raves and architecture raves - oh, and celebrity raves.

Had to go. Three of us went.

We ate in volume. I know it's not a good thing; sometimes food lust takes over. I promise to do penance - liquids for a week, a renewed green lifestyle, the bus five days a week. Whatever it takes to be forgiven.

Bless me, father, for I really sinned: small toast and steak tartar, small Kobe beef hamburgers, sashimi in tiny toast sandwiches, short ribs and India spices, crispy, stuffed fried squash leaves, beets, onion rings, creamed spinach, fresh pea pods and mint, and steaks - with any number of dips and spreads. To say nothing of the breads and the bread sticks.

It was very, very good. And just when I was about to pop and couldn't have cared if the entire Cruise (Tom's) family walked in and started jumping up and down on couches, WP himself, with those very initials sewn into his chef's coat, was standing tableside, hand outstretched.

I simply took his hand, said something like "lovely dinner" and locked my face into an expression of bliss rather than bloat.

Lovely dinner - that's all I could think of to say to Celeb Chef? Yep.
Cost - about $500 for the three of us. (Do I hear the sound of jaws hitting the space bar?)

Hey - it's Beverly Hills! What a thrill!

Ah, LA.

I love the place. It's sort of warm, really sunny, I don't see the stinking smog, sort of clogged, after yesterday's wind storm, and sort of huge - ah come on, the place is enormous.

And I'm for cramming as much into my three days here as possible, with as many pit stops as my budget and fast talking will allow. Yes, this brings to a standstill some of the hearts of the purse-string-holders at The Times, but I always vow to do it on the cheap. And I almost always do.

Of course, there was that time aboard the Queen Mary II when my cellphone broke and I had to use a landline to send my stories .... well, let's not bring that up again.

Let's talk about nose jobs.

I'm not getting one. But I am on the lookout.

Hey ... one of the first things I hear about when I wander into a little reception for the national Travel Editors Council last night (it's a group of various Travel editors from across the country who meet yearly) is that there's a nose in LA and lots of people have it and that I should look for it. I believe it because Carol Martinez of the LA Convention and Visitors Bureau said it's true.

I don't have the nose. She said that, too. I always have liked my nose. I need to check this out.

Maybe there's some irony here....

The country's Travel editors fly into LA (for a conference, a tiny conference; there aren't many of us left) on the day a lot of pilots said was the worst windy day they can remember in LA in years. That was yesterday, with some wind gusts in the area topping 80 mph.

Heck, it wasn't anywhere near as bouncy as flying into the Pasco airport. Anybody tried that lately? Erp City.

But this was fun. First time in all my years of flying I'd ever heard an announcement about airsick bags - where to find them, how to use them and what to do when you've done your business.

I kept reading. I don't get sick. Um, unless somebody else around me gets sick.
Somebody did. I held on.

Sunny day today (Friday) as I write this. Most of the traffic lights knocked out yesterday are back on - that helps. Big, fallen tree downtown was cleaned up just as dawn broke. I expect this is life in the big city.

That's where I am - LA.