I go to a lot of historical homes and palaces. One thing most of them have in common is sad stories. He built the home for the love of his life and she died shortly after it was finished. They built their dream house, but were then bankrupt. He never finished his castle, because he committed suicide. The bought the house, did extensive remodeling for their coming child, then the mother and child both died in childbirth. I’m just drawing these out of the air, but each one probably has at least five places I’ve been that would fit the story. It’s rare to find a happily-ever-after house.
Greystone Mansion is no different. “On the night of February 16, 1929, only five months after the family had moved in, Ned Doheny was found shot to death inside the home, at the age of 35 and the victim of an apparent murder-suicide perpetrated by his longtime personal friend and aid Hugh Plunkett,” says beverlyhills.org.
You are welcome to enjoy the grounds, but the interior is off limits. The facility is frequently used for grand affairs and as a location for filming movies, TV shows etc., but most of the time it just sits there sad and empty. There is a tour of the interior every first weekend, but that’s not when we were there.
All the signs say photography is not allowed, but then no one is there to stop you and we ran into some people scouting it as a filming location and they offered to take our picture for us, so if you go, snap away. I do believe what they say about filming, because just a few days after we got home, I saw a TV show where the characters were standing under the lamp in the photo above.
Here’s what the mansion looks like.
From the mansion, we drove around Beverly Hills a bit. We thoroughly enjoy looking at rich people’s stuff. Then we returned to our nephew’s house for the evening and had dinner at an Italian restaurant that was supposed to be historical, but it was really just dirty and old and the food was awful.
The vacation was winding down. We’d be flying back the next day, but I had one more trick up my sleeve and it turned into one of the things we enjoyed most of the whole vacation.
After the Casa de Herrero tour was over, we were hungry, but the time of the tour had landed us right in that dead zone between lunch and dinner. We drove to Santa Barbara, found some parking and walked over the State Street. When you live on the Central Coast, Santa Barbara is the big city or at least the biggest city in striking distance, so we’d been there many time during our six year sojourn and we made it point to visit whenever we returned.
State Street is the main drag and there are many choices of restaurants, but most of them can be a little pricey. We walked up and down, visited a few shops and then Bill decided on Pizza. Mizza was a satisfying choice gastronomically, but the service could have been better.
On to Carpinteria
We have a secret when we visit Santa Barbara. We stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Carpinteria . The price is right and it has everything we need. I did a great job describing it last time, so there’s no need reiterating it.
The next day in Santa Barbara was just what it was supposed to be, a chance to decompress before heading back to LA and then back home. We hung around the beachside area and Stern’s Wharf, enjoyed an art show, stopped by the mission, drove around the hills and saw an open house, had lunch at someplace called the Fish House. It was nice, if not spectacular.
Our favorite part of the day was back in Carpinteria. It was about sundown when we rolled into town and I saw a sign pointing towards Carpinteria Beach. We headed that way and found much of the population of Carpinteria making the most of a Sunday twilight.
We spent a good amount of time there, enjoying the people as much as we did the beach. Back in the room, there was a little reorganizing and packing. Bill had some work he needed to do and I did some crosswords. Exciting, right?
Here’s the page I created to remember Carpinteria Beach by.
MAKING MEMORIES: PISMO LIGHTHOUSE SUITES & CASA DE HERRERO
Pismo Lighthouse Suites
I can’t abandon Pismo without a shout out to our wonderful accommodations. After the grandeur of the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort, pretty much anything else would have to be a step down, but we didn’t have to step very far down. Pismo Lighthouse Suites proved to be an excellent choice for a stay.
One thing we certainly loved was the breakfast every morning, served in a community room and if you couldn’t find something you liked, then you are really too picky. I’d sure stay here again.
Casa de Herreroin Montecito
Bill usually leaves most of the vacation planning to me, but when he does make a suggestion, it’s a jewel. I didn’t find it in any of my research, but it should be on every must-see list for Santa Barbara. It’s a little pricey and hard to schedule, but it is a gem.
The home is open to the public at 10 AM and 2 PM on Wednesdays and Saturdays – PERIOD! And the tickets are $50 per person. I’ll wait for you to catch your breath. If budget is not a constraint and you can be there on their schedule, then you have to go. You will love it. Lotus Land was $60 each, but it seems to me there was a whole lot more to it. Still, I’m glad I had the opportunity to go.
We pulled into Montecito about 1:15 PM and had to kill about half and hour in a shopping center parking lot. We couldn’t just go hang out by the Casa. They keep the gate closed until a few minutes before the tour and you aren’t allow to park in the neighborhood. Parking is at a premium everywhere in Montecito and the signs at the shopping center were very threatening, so we couldn’t even lock up the car and go for a walk. We had to pretend one or the other of us was visiting one of the establishments, while the other guarded the car.
Finally, it was almost time for them to open their gate, so we made our way to the home. When the tour started, we were informed we couldn’t take photos inside, but think San Simeon’s dining room turned into a full house. Very Spanish and a little dark.
The original builder and owner of the house was George Fox Steedman from San Luis Obispo, who started out as a metalsmith and woodworker, threw in a few real estate deals and became filthy stinking rich. The house had a metalsmithing and woodworking studio where Mr. Steedman pursued his interests. The house is full of valuable antiques from the Golden Age of Spain, but they are pretty dark and depressing.
Counterpoint to the interior with it’s nod to the Inquisition, outside was delightful and you could take photos. And that’s what you’ll see on the photo book pages I’ve included below.
After leaving our old house and taking a drive through it’s neighborhood, we headed to Downtown Pismo Beach. Some things don’t change and trying to park in Pismo is one of them. Weekday in January and parking was at a premium. We made our way down to the waterfront where many improvements had taken place. We took pictures, walked to then of the pier and took more pictures. It’s not the most beautiful beach in the world, but it’s a familiar one.
Over our two day stay we snapped photos wherever we were. Eating at the Shore Cliff (which they now call the Ventana Grill), hanging at Pismo Lighthouse Suites (which was a marvelous place to stay), visiting our friends or just driving between their houses. I combined all these photos to create Pismo Beach pages I’ve added below for you to see.
On to Estero Bay& Cayucos
Though Pismo Beach is where we built our home and lived later in California, we first lived in Los Osos. Los Osos was part of a estuary shared with Morro Bay. Then down the road a little bit is Cayucos. These were our haunts.
We finished many a day in Los Osos by visiting the beautiful Montana de Oro State Park which was moments away from our rental house. Or we’d just walk around our neighborhood, Cabrillo Estates with it’s jaw dropping views. Bill also enjoyed playing golf at Sea Pines Resort.
Los Osos was a great place to live, but it didn’t have much in the way of restaurants, so eating out usually meant going over to Morro Bay which was more of a touristy town. If if we wanted Tex-Mex, we’d go to the only place on the Central Coast which actually knew what that was, Taco Temple in Cayucos. They were more famous for their California Fusion fish tacos, but we always ordered the nachos.
We also loved going up to Cambria with beautiful Moonstone Beach, but we didn’t make it this trip. Don’t worry, we’ll make a point of going next time we visit the area – and we will visit the area again.
So, on this nostalgic tour, we drove up to the top of Cabrillo Estates and stood in wonder of the majesty of God’s creation. We hit our two favorite spots in Montana de Oro, Spooner’s Cove and the Bluff Trail. Sea Pines was next and the Baywood neighborhood nearby. On we drove on around the estuary and through Morro Bay State Park.
We hadn’t left Pismo until around 3 PM, so the day was getting away from us. We merely drove through most of Morro Bay, but we did get out at Morro Rock. From the rock we drove on Highway 1 beside Morro Bay Strand to spend a few minutes on the Cayucos Pier, before going to Taco Temple for a plate of their nachos.
If you’re wondering what all that looked like, then you’ll enjoy these pages.
My friendship with Lizbet started at work many years ago. I was in a bind with a customer and she fixed it, when everyone else in the company shrugged their shoulders at me. I was in sales back in those days, which I hated, and when I moved to admin, one of the best things about it was being in the same building as Lizbet. What started as a transactional solution, led to being lunch buddies and on to her being one of my favorite people on the face of the earth. There’s a lot of water under that bridge.
No one can make me laugh the way she can. We love talking about odd, esoteric things that few others care about. And she gets Bill. There’s more, but that’s enough!
Tour Guide Extraordinaire
Because she gets me and she gets Bill, she knew we’d love the things she loves about the area. Such as the ferry to Balboa Island, which was her first treat of the day. It’s a tiny ferry that only holds one or two cars. These days there’s a bridge that takes you there without waiting for the nostalgic reminder of yesteryear, but we loved the experience. She also took us up a winding Laguna Beach road which leads through gorgeous residential areas to an overlook that’s known as Top of the World. Bill’s favorite thing was Crescent Bay Point Park, which was a lovely park high above a beautiful bay.
But the best part of the day, by far, was spending time with such a good friend. Neither one of us is particularly good about staying in touch, but the occasional holiday greeting and texted update keeps the friendship alive, until we spend another wonderful day together. From a day like that, there should be hundreds and hundreds of photos, but there’s not! Here’s some that we did take.
I confess, on some travel days, I get a little stressed. On this one, I’d just been to LACMA for a long anticipated visit and the only thing left on the day’s itinerary was to get to our hotel in Huntington Beach. So, we stopped along the way to run personal errands, like stocking up on fruit for Bill and beverages for me and generally took our time.
Before leaving the Nephew, we’d asked them about their favorite beach along our route and they recommended Hermosa. So when a sign pointed the way to it, we decided to take a look.
Parking is a real challenge in Hermosa Beach. It’s not cheap and you’re lucky to find a space, but it is worth a stop. We were there towards the end of the day on a Tuesday, so there was the occasional open space, but of course, Bill had to satisfy himself he was getting the best deal.
Surfer’s Walk of Fame
Did you know there was a Surfer’s Walk of Fame? Would you have gone looking for it in Hermosa Beach? I had no idea! Remember, I had depended on my nephew’s skills as a tour guide in LA and we were headed to Huntington Beach, where my primary focus was visiting one of my very best friends, Lizbet. Hermosa Beach hadn’t been on my radar.
There’s a wonderful, serendipitous feel to wandering around without an agenda. I get why people do it and on occasion I enjoy it, too. However, during these spontaneous moments you sometime find yourself meditating over a dandelion in the sidewalk, a block over from one the coolest things in the world. So, FOMO keeps me carefully researching most of our trips.
We strolled along a paved walkway toward a pier, taking photos along the way. For us, taking photos is part of seeing. Our eyes graze our surroundings, looking for vignettes to capture. We lift our cameras to snap a photo and move on. Later we enjoy the images and for me at least, sharing them is part of the fun.
At the entry to the pier stands a very cool statue of a surfer dude catching a wave. As you stroll out to the of the pier you really begin to see why it’s called Hermosa (Beautiful) Beach. Then a plaque on the pier caught my eye. Surfer’s Walk of Fame? What was that?
Looking more closely along the pier, I realized there were many plaques, spaced evenly along either side. Bill continued to snap photos of the scenery and I started reading the plaques. It was a love story, written for surfer dudes and all the dudes loved the same mistress. I now had a new affection for Hermosa Beach.
I wouldn’t recommend making a special trip to California just to see the Surfer’s Walk of Fame, but if you’re driving along Highway 5, it’s worth the parking fee. I hope you’ll drop by on Wednesday and Friday for Memory Keeping and Memory Sharing, but for now I’ll leave you with my Hermosa Beach pages, made in Artisan 6.
I lived in California for six years and made a few visits to LA every year. We moved back to Texas and have been back to LA several times. I had LACMA on my list every time, but never got there. There were always other things at the top of the list and I loved seeing those wonderful sights, but LACMA was not one of them. This trip it was at the top of the list and my poor husband was reminded of it frequently.
After our scheduled days with family, we waved goodbye and headed off to LACMA. That’s the finally part. The not quite part was the massive construction project they had going on. I had the opportunity to see mere snippets of the many works of the LACMA and I am so happy I went. However, there’s a lot more to see than was available for viewing, so LACMA went right back to the top of my LA list.
The Modern Part of Our Visit
So the red and glass building at the top of this post is BCAM, “the centerpiece” of LACMA (according to LACMA). We weren’t enchanted, but then we aren’t big fans of Contemporary Art. We listen to the lectures and look at the art, trying to appreciate it, but give us European Renaissance any day, or Impressionists, or Decorative Arts, or well, you understand. We killed most of an hour over there and at least 15 minutes of that was spent on a “is that all there is” re-tour of the facility.
The Other Part of the Museum
Then we stepped next door at the Resnick Pavilion which contained a “Highlights” collection and there we were perfectly happy for a whole lot longer. There was one gallery with a sort of one-of-each approach to the collection. One painting, one sculpture, one vase, one gemstone etc. etc. etc. I could have stayed there all day.
There was also a mural being painted in real time and an exhibition about it. This was California, so they had some lame-woke-liberal (IMHO) excuse for the mural which made me roll my eyes, but I did love watching the artists paint.
Then we wandered into the Arabic art section. Adored it. They had a room set up in which I could imagining several turban-headed men lounging on the sofas, smoking hookahs and watching belly dancers. The belly dancers are probably more imagination than I should have applied, but it was great. We spent a lot of time in that gallery, too. Fascinating stuff. One might wonder why Arabic art got a whole gallery, while the highlights were so parsimonious, but it is their museum, not mine.
It was time to hit the road and head towards Huntington Beach. As we left, I looked longingly at the David Geffen Galleries, under construction across the plaza, and promised myself I’d be back.
There were giant animal head sculptures along the plaza. I imagined them starting to talk, as if I were on a strange planet with Captain Kirk. Then I remembered Gobekli Tepe. One of my favorite ruminations is imagining future archeologist digging up some of our monuments and surmising who we had been. Would they recognize this as a museum or would they think the collection of animal heads were a tribute to our gods.
Anyway, I hope you’ll visit on Wednesday and Friday for Memory Keeping and Memory Sharing. In the meantime, here are the pages I created in Artisan to sum up our visit.
I am the Museum Girl. I want to get up early, to be there when they open, and I could happily stay until they close, especially if they have cool restaurants to enjoy. While this little trip to Detroit had been lovely in a number of ways, the schedules of my top choices were not cooperating with me.
If I’d had my druthers, we’d have been to the Motown Museum, the living museum of Greenfield Village and more, but they weren’t open when we had time to see them. Some of the things I wanted to see, like the Conservatory on Belle Island were being remodeled. What I had seen was nice, but it was secondary and tertiary selections, because the family events took first place and keeping Bill happy took second.
I had one non-negotiable though. If I did nothing else, I wanted to see the Detroit Institute of Art and finally the time to do that had arrived.
Remnant of a Glorious Past
About the time they were building The Guardian Building I enjoyed so much downtown, Detroit was almost the center of the world. Americans flocked there for vacation like we go to New York, Chicago or San Fran. It’s where all the best shows were performed, the shopping was wonderful and the Detroit Institute of Art reigned the cultural world. The men went to smoky offices to discuss commerce and the women spent their money after a visit to the museum.
The DIA retains all the beauty of her former glory and she’s making a comeback in the world of museums. The city of Detroit went through some pretty tough days. It wasn’t just the Renaissance Center and the Guardian Building which seemed like a ghost town. The whole of Detroit almost disappeared and her cultural jewels could have been up for grabs, but she held on and now her art museum is back to its former glory and bragging about all the improvements they have in the works.
The DIA is a wonderful place to go if you want to see classical art in America. They were one of those museums which bought all the good stuff up before later cities could get their share. I once heard a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art answer a question about their lack of important classical pieces, “How could an important, wealthy city, like Dallas, have so few recognizable classical pieces?” The curator explained that when the DMA started collecting art, those recognizable classical pieces already had home in Europe and a few American museums – museums like the DIA.
If you ever get the opportunity to go, I hope you’ll do so and leave plenty of time, so you can see it all. My husband took about 100 pictures and then he took almost that many more of the tags that went with them. I won’t show you all 100 or the tags, but I thought you might enjoy these portraits of women.
Heading Homeward
Far too soon, it was time to go. There were a number of unfamiliar variables, so I had allowed plenty of time in my schedule for trouble. I checked on the travel time from the museum. I added a little time for traffic, for finding a gas station, for fueling the car, for returning the car, for getting transported to the terminal from the remote rental car and so on and so forth.
Well, none of that happened. There was no traffic. Bill pulled off the road at an exit, found a gas station within a block and filled up without having to wait. We returned the car in moments and the bus took us immediately. We checked our luggage without a single delay and there was no line at security. Bill wasn’t happy, because he doesn’t like to wait. I was happy! After what we went through getting to Detroit, I was happy to be all checked in and ready to board. A vast difference in priorities there.
We got home safe and sound. Come back next week and see what we got up to next.
We’d started our day in an empty world headquarters, had breakfast in ghost town food court and taken a ride on an abandoned monorail. We were beginning to wonder if anyone actually lived or worked in Detroit. Still, finding gems off the beaten path is one of my favorite things to do, so this hunt for The Guardian Building was just my cup of tea.
It was Travel Advisor which clued me in on the existence of a pristine Art Deco skyscraper in Downtown Detroit. Once we got off the People Mover I asked Google Maps to find The Guardian Building and as I thought, it was just around the corner from the monorail stop. Instead of trying to describe it, I’ll just share some of the photos we snapped.
Gorgeous, right? Like the Renaissance Center, there wasn’t much in the way of human occupation. There was a security guard behind a desk in the central lobby and up the stairs was a large open area. A barista lurked behind a coffee bar and there was a tour company office on the other side and that was it. Where were the rest of the inhabitants of Detroit?
Campus Martius Park
While the Riverfront and Greektown are obviously popular areas in Detroit, we’d be seeing those with the family later in the weekend, so I wanted to focus on things we wouldn’t see with them, which took us to this downtown park.
It was here we finally connected with humanity. As we strolled along a well landscaped path between the skyscrapers, we happened upon a beach bar. Yes, I said a beach bar. Sand, lounge chairs and drinks with fruit in them. Don’t believe me?
It would have suited me fine to take a load off and sample their wares, but Bill was not in lounging mode. He was doing his best to play tourist, but he was distracted. Not only were most of our credit cards compromised by hackers, but the market was open and we’d just turned over our real estate photography company to the new owner. We were supposed to be celebrating that last bit, but after nursing our enterprise to success for six years, we were having some separation anxiety. Was this guy going to be able to handle it? It’s not that we weren’t happy to see it go. We just didn’t want it back!
At the end of the park is One Campus Maritus, the Compuware headquarters, famous for this 14 story waterfall.
And that left one final stop along Woodward Avenue we wanted to visit, The Grand Circus. It’s not a circus with a tent, but a park in a circle. It was a much quieter venue than Campus Maritus with its beach bar and perhaps we would have skipped it altogether had we known, but it was right next to a People Mover station, so it turned out to be quite convenient.
On to our Next Accommodations
The People Mover took us back to Renaissance Center, where we claimed our rental car and headed to Pontiac/Auburn Hills. That was the location of the Residence Inn which would be our home away from home over the next few days. It was close to all the family events and had just what we wanted.
Certainly the Renaissance Center Marriott was more glamourous, but the Residence Inn offered a comfort the swanky hotel did not – a separate sitting room I could escape to each morning. I wake up so early out of habit, but Bill knows how to sleep late and I like to give him that luxury. On the way, we stopped at a grocery store to get some items to enjoy during our stay – wine, bottled water, fruit, protein bars etc.
I’m a pretty easy-going traveler. I don’t think I have ever rejected a room, even though there have been a few times I should have. Bill on the other hand is a little harder to please. He will go down to the desk and complain when he doesn’t like something. At the Residence Inn, he didn’t like the view. It’s a suburban Residence Inn, so I didn’t expect a view, but he did. We got a different room and don’t tell him, but I sort of liked the first one better. It seemed a little more convenient and not quite as dorm-like, but Bill did like the view better, so we stayed.
The Family Weekend
Over the next few days, we were involved with family. We had a get together at a local restaurant Friday night and the big Gender Reveal at a Country Club Saturday. Sunday we hung out at the Riverfront, had lunch in Greek town and a game of golf in the afternoon. On Monday, the main event was an absolute feast, fit for a Pharaoh with all our Egyptian favorites. While it was a lot of fun, it wouldn’t be of much interest to anyone outside the family. (It’s a boy by the way. Our Grand Nephew will arrive in October.)
After the feast, we went back towards Detroit and stayed at the Smithfield Westin. It was a nice hotel, but we were just there to sleep. In the morning I was finally getting to do something that had been on every version of my itinerary the Detroit Institute of Art. Come back next week and enjoy our visit.
Confession, Bill and I are happy when it’s just us two. It’s not that we don’t love our family and friends, nor does it have anything to do with not wanting to spend time with them. We just like to find the right mix of time for us and time with them.
Our weekend in Michigan was going to be full to bursting with family time from a happy hour on Friday evening to a family feast on Monday evening. So, Friday morning we decided to play tourists on our own.
Plans Are Made to be Changed
I cannot count the times I rearranged our itinerary in the months before our trip, but I thought I had a pretty good plan put together a few weeks before our arrival. Then I did some double checking, just in case – and it was a good thing! The hours posted in March for my chosen attractions had changed in May! I had to completely revamp my schedule in the days just before we left.
My plan, when we departed on Thursday, included getting up early and heading off to Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford on Friday morning. Well, after the bumps in the road on our travel day, getting Mr. Bill up early the next morning to go to a historical amusement part, didn’t sound as good as it had back in Dallas.
If I had been traveling with my bestie, we’re both early risers by nature, so it would have just been another day of fun for us. However, getting an exhausted Bill up early and out of our hotel room, to go to an amusement park, wasn’t going to kick off our vacation with the right foot.
Because of the accumulated travel difficulties, we’d missed out on a walking tour of Downtown Detroit I’d planned for Thursday evening. So, I changed my plans again. We’d take our time getting up and checking out of our hotel room and then do our Detroit walking tour, beginning with the People Mover.
Breakfast in Renaissance Center
In 1996 General Motors opened the first phase of Renaissance Center in homage to itself. This was to be, and still is, their world headquarters. It is a beautiful grouping of buildings, but it is also a ghost town. On a Friday morning it should be abustle with the comings and goings of the world, but it seemed virtually empty. It was us, a few maintenance people and a group of rambunctious children meeting for a field trip.
It was a little spooky wandering around in the vast empty lobby of the Renaissance Towers. Just outside the Marriott lobby, a sign promised several dining choices, but we just wanted to grab a quick breakfast, not have dinner at a steak or seafood venue. The People Mover Food Court sounded like what we needed, especially since we were also looking for the People Mover, but getting to it was a new challenge.
With a little direction from the cleaning crew, we took an elevator to a lower level and found the epicenter of the ghost town. The ambitious plans of the designers were evident, as were the resulting disappointment. An attractive seating area for hundreds of patrons with spots for many food vendors filled a large portion of the lower level, but it echoed emptily with a few orders from the field trip participants to the last food vendor standing.
Their menu was a cross between a short order grill and a gyro stand. The menu offered schwerma that didn’t actually exist, so Bill settled on something else from the Mediterranean menu and I got a grilled cheese sandwich. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t all that good either. Time for the People Mover.
The People Mover
I missed the People Mover in my initial Detroit research, but our family mentioned a free monorail in some of our correspondence, so I looked a little further because free city transportation sounded like a great thing. The sign announcing the presence of the People Mover Food Court led me to believe the Food Court and the People Mover would be adjacent to one other, but after breakfast we discovered my assumption was wrong.
The signage in the building is awful and as I mentioned, there were hardly any fellow humans walking around in it. The cleaning people, who had sent us to the Food Court, seemed a little vague about the People Mover’s location, but then we ran into an elevator repairman. He got us going in the right direction, but it was still hard to find. We went through a little trial and error before we actually found it.
Bill was ready to just walk where we wanted to go, because it wasn’t far, but I wanted to include a report on the People Mover here, so I pressed on. We did eventually find it, but the discovery was like happening up on an abandoned amusement park. As we waited, we’d just about given up again, when a security guard arrived and assured us we were in the right place. The monorail would arrive shortly.
To my dismay, I discovered the monorail traveled in only one direction and that direction was in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. However, the circular route isn’t all that long, so we boarded the car when it came and took in an aerial tour of Downtown Detroit.
It wasn’t long until we’d made it all around and were arriving at our stop. I got my bearings and headed to the Guardian Building. Come back next week, because you’ll want to find out about that Art Deco beauty.
jane sadek 