Marina del Ray

The marina at Marina del Ray is a phenomenon that has a story-book quality. Everywhere one looks, there is another beautiful sight to photograph.  We arrived right before the sunset and took a little stroll along the dock.

As we were looking for a place to eat, we ran into a very pleasant surprise... my favorite restaurant from twenty years ago, Shanghai Reds, was right there on our path...

One Lovely Stop Along the Ocean - Santa Monica

Shutters on the Beach @ Santa Monica

What is a there to do in LA on a warm November Sunday after having a very satisfying brunch at the Grove?  Why take a drive down to Malibu, of course... It was my husband's first time in Los Angeles and we just had to show him the drive along the ocean. 

Even though living on the West Coast holds no appeal for me, I still admire the drive to Malibu along the ocean... It is such a scenic route that can always uplift my spirits.  Today was no exception... we just followed the signs for Santa Monica and then when we hit the ocean, continued on North, driving along looking at all the lovely homes and watching the surfers out on the ocean.  One of the greatest things about this drive is that one doesn't need directions, we decided to just drive... We drove North for about one hour then decided to turn around and go to Santa Monica.  When we got to Santa Monica, my husband as well as the baby were both sleeping so Wendy and I left them in the car with Murat and went out on the boardwalk.  We had parked the car in a lot near the Shutters on the Beach Hotel so that we could go over and check it out.  Wendy actually had made reservations at their restaurant One Pico but we still had the lingering effects of our wonderful brunch at the Farm of Beverly Hills, so all I could manage was a walk around the quaint hotel.  It is truly a lovely hotel with a dreamy lobby and two restaurants that both fit my taste perfectly.


Shutters on the Beach   
http://www.shuttersonthebeach.com/
One Pico Blvd
Santa Monica, CA, 90405
310-458-0030

The Santa Monica Pier, was right behind us and it was nice to look at from afar.  I had been there on my previous trip to LA when I had rented a bicycle and ridden along these paths on the beach with Hasan and Murat.  It was a great way to experience Santa Monica like a local.  I hope to repeat it in the future again.

From here we wanted to head to Marina del Ray because I had heard the sunset there, was something that had to be seen... we were not disappointed.

A Perfect Sunday - Breakfast

It was Sunday, a bright and beautiful day, we were in LA, our only concern where to have brunch this morning.  After not much deliberation at all, we decided to go to the Grove for breakfast, only a ten minute walk from where we were staying.
Farm of Beverly Hills is Wendy's favorite restaurant there, with good reason.  Not only does it have excellent food but it is also in the middle of the Grove, right by the fountain.

The first thing that came out, with our coffee, was a wonderful coffee cake muffin that we devoured in five minutes and asked for more.  This is so fantastic that I can go back there everyday just for that muffin... it is also the best accompaniment for coffee.

Corned Beef & Potatoes

Mehmet ordered the Corned Beef & Potatoes that we all wanted in the end.  It was a great sandwich - a perfect combination.

California Omlet

Wendy and I decided to share a California Omlet.  It was good but I am not sure if I would order it again.

Belgian Waffle

I can only assume how good Murat's Belgian Waffle was, since it was finished within an heartbeat.

Farm of Beverly Hills turned out to be the best idea for a weekend breakfast.  I would definitely recommend it for a sweet break to anyone who might be shopping, sightseeing or just hanging out at the Grove where parking is a breeze with lots of shops and attractions to spend a pleasant time relaxing.

One of the Top Ten Restaurants in the World According to the New York Times

My brother's wife, Wendy, is originally from Taiwan, and since she knows of Murat's preference for dumplings, she wanted to take us to the Dumpling House that has been lauded as 'One of the Worlds' Top Ten Restaurants' by the New York Times.  She explained to us that the original Din Tai Fung was very close to their house in Taipei and they used to go there for dumpling very frequently until the New York Times article turned it into a major attraction and the wait became unacceptable.  Honestly the wait at this branch in Arcadia, California was quite ridiculous as well but we were already there and Prometheus was sound asleep so our curiosity won over our common sense and we waited.  

We were in Arcadia because earlier we went to visit the campus of California Institute of Technology - 'Caltech' - a dream school if there ever was one. Arcadia and Pasadena are 15 minutes from each other and since we were already 40 minutes out of LA, we thought to get as much as possible in for this area.

After driving around Pasadena till the sunset. we picked up Wendy and Pro and headed to the Dumpling House.  The crowd outside the restaurant was a little disconcerting but Wendy insisted we had to try this, so we put our name on the 45 minute waiting list.  Inside the restaurant was a madhouse, there was so much activity it was impossible to follow the food leaving the kitchen and going to the tables.  With Wendy's intervention, we were seated at a table in half an hour.  On our table was a small checklist of the foods that were available.  We were lucky to have Wendy with us because basically we went with her suggestions and it turned out to be perfect.

XIAOLONGBAO (Taiwanese small steamed buns)

The specialty of the house xiaolongbao, is different than a Chinese Dumpling because the bun is much thinner and there is a great juice that accompanies the pork filling.  You are suppose to eat these by putting them in a Chinese spoon and then topping them with their special vinegar.  There is no easy way to eat these in my opinion since you have to be able to pick up the dumplings with chopsticks out of a spoon, bite into them without burning your tongue with the hot juices gushing out and dip it again into the vinegar back in the spoon.  But it is worth every bit of the struggle.  I especially liked the fact that it was so juicy and not so doughy.  

Shrimp Dumpling

These were my favorites, you got a mouthful of shrimp.  I prefer these to the pork dumplings but I am a seafood person.  

Besides the dumplings we ordered some other items from the menu/list.  One given at any Chinese Restaurant with my husband is Hot and Sour Soup.  He absolutely has to try it wherever he goes.  Although, I don't think he has met a hot and sour soup he hasn't liked, he said the soup here was really excellent.

Hot and Sour Soup

When I was staying with Wendy after she had Prometheus, she fixed me up a wonderful dish with rice cakes, chicken and vegetables.  I loved it , so when she saw that they had a dish with rice cakes on the menu she suggested we order it.  I devoured the whole thing almost by myself.  Rice cakes have a very interesting texture that goes very well in a dish such as these where they don't dominate but help to emphasize the flavors of the other ingredients.  I liked it so much, I tried to make some at home but was not successful.  I think I need to find a restaurant on the East coast that has them on their menu so that I could go there to eat them whenever I got the craving.

Shanghai Rice cake with Pork

Mostly the rice cakes can be seen in this photo, they resemble bamboo shoots in appearance when first seen in a dish.

SESAME NOODLES

Sesame noodles are my brothers favorite and I was surprised to realize I had never tried them before.  This is a cold dish with a sauce that reminded me of tahini, (not very surprising since tahini is sesame paste.)  This is a dish that should be tried in small doses because although it is very tasty, I think it is also a very strong dish.

Everything we tried was excellent and it was worth the wait.  

Din Tai Fung Dumpling House

1108 S. Baldwin Ave

Arcadia, CA 91007

Tel  626-574-7068

http://www.dintaifungusa.com/

More Good Times, GoodEats...

Today, we got a bit of a late start.  After Murat came back from taking the SAT's and Wendy came home from work, we went out for brunch at one of Wendy and Cenk's favorite haunts in LA - 'Little Next Door.'
This Place was amazing, a French bistro. with great food, authentic atmosphere and outdoor dining...
People watching is also a big plus in this wonderful LA eatery.

All three of us ordered the French Onion Soup which was just perfect...

The Nicoise Salad with fresh vegetables and real tuna steaks was delicious.

The Roast Beef French Dip Sandwich with Horse Radish Mustard Dip

(I highly recommend this, it was delightful)

Creme Brulee was to die for...

Little next door DELI-CAFE

http://www.thelittledoor.com/lndhome.html#

8142 West 3rd St.

LA, CA 90048

Tel :  323-951-1010

Fax:  323-951-0700

Deli-Cafe Hours:

Monday - Thursday                  Friday - Sunday

11AM - 11PM                          8AM -11PM

Road Trip to San Luis Obispo

I have always had this romantic notion of taking a road trip... driving seems like a very liberating venture since the  direction, duration and manner of the trip is completely up to the your whims. Schedules, departure times, destinations... completely irrelevant.  But, this is not a very ideal situation when one partner's idea of a road trip is to get from point A to point B.  Luckily, I can be very creative...

We were visiting Los Angeles... our son was interested in studying engineering... Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is reputed to have one of the best programs in mechanical and aeronautical engineering and we could drive out there in only three and a half hours... It should not come as a big surprise that today, we had an appointment at the Engineering College in Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo at two o'clock.  

We got on the road around 9.00am supplied with pastries from the cafe around the corner for breakfast.  

In about an hour and forty minutes we passed by Santa Barbara, I really wanted to stop by and show Mehmet around since I think this is one of the most beautiful places I have seen on this coast but we had an appointment to catch, besides... he was asleep in the back anyway...  A very pleasant surprise was in store for us though; the GPS took us onto CR 154 which is a two lane road through the valleys and mountains of Santa Barbara.  It was such a beautiful, winding road with incredible vistas opening up with each corner turned.  All around us campers were on the road in their jeeps with their tents latched onto their roofs.

I was so enjoying the view that at first I didn't realize we were low on gas.  But once I saw the fuel gage, I decided to turn this into an opportunity to explore.  We were going through major camp country and when I saw a sign for fuel right next to a sign for a campsite, I knew I just had to follow that path.  As we turned off the road, we came up to an entrance gate where the ranger on duty asked us what we needed.  When we inquired about gas, she just gave us a pass and pointed us in the right direction.  After that we found ourselves in the middle of a wonderful campsite right next to what I later realized was Lake Cachuma.

 We refilled and got some drinks and snacks from the General Store and were back on the road once again.

            

After driving 198 miles on the 'El Camino Real' for about 3 and a half hours, we were finally on the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus.  

Murat was advised that one of the things he should do when visiting a school was to try the food there, so we headed to the first cafeteria we could find.  It was the Market at Cal Poly, a supermarket/cafeteria with quite bad food but we were famished and just dealt with it.  

After Murat visited the engineering school and was properly impressed with their wind tunnel, we were back on the road again.  

    

We found ourselves in the middle of the weekend rush hour traffic and had to stop at Santa Barbara for a little snack break.  Oh, it was such a hardship... 

Watching the sunset over the pacific ocean was great and catching the reflections on store windows was a lot of fun.

After lingering for as long as we could, we went back on the road and were pleasantly surprised to find that traffic was finally moving. 

By the time we got back to Los Angeles, it was dark and we were hungry once again and took this opportunity to introduce Mehmet to another LA classic...Hot dogs at  Pink's...

Pink's serves the most interesting hot dogs, maybe, anywhere... But one of the most interesting parts of the experience was the long unending line we had to wait in for almost 40 minutes; it is like this even at 2 o'clock in the morning.  This was definitely the right way to end this wonderful day.

http://www.pinkshollywood.com/index.htm

Pink's Hot Dogs

709 N. La Brea Ave (Melrose Avenue)

Los Angeles, CA 90038

(323) 931 - 4223

                      

Remembering Past Journeys... Taormina, Sicily

June 2006 Taormina, Italy

Today is my friend Arzu's birthday and I wanted to send her a special birthday wish... She is a great traveler and so I wish her a year full of enchanting experiences in faraway places... 

Every Painter Paints Himself | Freud’s Self-Portrait, Reflection

I just discovered this site www.everypainterpaintshimself.com and am absolutely fascinated by it.
I loved reading the latest post on Lucian Freud's Portrait of the Queen Elizabeth and his own Self-portrait.

Every Painter Paints Himself | Freud’s Self-Portrait, Reflection

I wish I had known about this site before I went to see Lucian Freud's exhibit at MOMA back in 2008.  It was a very powerful exhibit that I walked out of reluctantly.  It was about his etchings but there were also a lot of his portraits and large size nudes on display as well.

For anyone who is interested in Freud, it is definitely worth taking a look through the museum's Interactive pages for this past exhibit.  I just went through it again and was  awed by his style and how engaging his figures were, one more time.  After reading about the suggestion that the artist's alter-ego is present in the portraits he paints, I hope I will get a chance to view another exhibit by Freud in the near future since his portraits are by far some of the most interesting I have seen.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2007/freud/home.html

‘Inside job’- the end of my blissful ignorance

For years I have lived happily in ignorance of the upheaval that is taking place all around me.  Amidst all the chaos of wars being fought for no apparent reason other than greed and provocation, administrators in power trying to dictate or discriminate against people for their faith or lack thereof, recessions, inflations, bubbles, I was an island just staying happily afloat in deliberate naiveté.  My only concerns related to taking care of my family, running my business, taking art lessons and going to galleries and museums wherever I may be.   I didn’t read the newspapers or listen to the news, my only exception was listening every once in a while to my brother’s show, The Young Turks, on the internet but that was for pure entertainment.  The reason for my self-imposed illiteracy was because I felt powerless and insignificant in face of all that was happening in the world; although this was my lifelong belief, the ’second Bush’ era, I believe, cemented the fact of an individual’s inconsequentiality.  I only had one vote and that was the extent of my power, the current administration could do whatever pleased them or the interests they were supporting without being held accountable.  The world would keep on turning, young people dying for no logical, humane reasons, some people going bankrupt while others’ endowments swelled to incomprehensible proportions whether I took notice or not…

I was living in Turkey for the past twenty years up until a year ago where most of everyone’s favorite pastime had to do with discussing either politics or football (soccer) neither of which I am even remotely interested in.  “What is going to happen to this country” was the most frequent question that was on everyone’s lips and opening salvo for any conversation.  The current politics always involved some kind of nauseating precept relating in some way to religion since the party in power is what is currently being dubbed as favoring ‘mild Islam’ in a secular state that is more than 90% Muslim.  To the horror of most of the people I know, Turkey’s current president and prime minister’s wives are what we call ‘covered’ - they wear the ‘turban,’ the biggest political statement in Turkey these days.  I can hear from everyone around me of the good old days back in the 50’s and 60’s when the only women who wore headscarves were the elderly relatives in people’s families.  For years, there I was, a woman who grew up and was educated in the United States, trying to raise two boys to be world citizens, aware of their own heritage and national identity while attempting to come to terms with a country that was supposed to be my motherland in which I felt more an outsider every day.

Keeping myself news-free wasn’t an easy task either when my husband’s favorite pastime was listening to the news and all the talk shows and panels discussing the current economy and the political scene; the Turkish nightly news is anything but local or whimsical.   Unfortunately, thanks to my husband, we went to see the movie, ‘Inside Job’ on Saturday and it is the end of my innocence, I am now much more knowledgeable about the current economic mess we are in and started to recognize the protagonists on television where they seem to appear every other second.  So, now I know about deregulation and risky mortgages and derivatives, and I recognized the former CEO of Countrywide Insurance, Angelo Mozilo when Cenk mentioned him Tuesday night on Countdown, I also know that there is no end in sight… and what has that gotten me in return… is my family’s or my own life more enriched in any way because of this uncalled for knowledge?  Am I a better person or one that is more beneficial to the world at large due to this bit of wisdom?  

When the lights went on in the theater after viewing 'Inside Job', I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment of the gentleman who was sitting one row behind me … “I want to go throw myself under a bus now…” 

Instead I want to throw this question out into the world, hoping to get some kind of an intelligent alternative, after all that I have seen and learned, how can anyone blame me for wanting to retreat to the beautiful world of art where the contemporary works challenge and exhilarate my intellect and all that is left of the past rulers like the Medici from the time of the Renaissance are beautiful art effects that have made our world more refined.  I only wish that the current political and financial ‘powers’ would leave something more than this desolate landscape for future generations to study. 

 www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/ 

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day,
Nothing gold can stay.
                                
              -  Robert Frost (1923)

A sense of Self Through Art - Part 2

My first official blog-post that I sent out to all my friends and acquaintances, back in June 10th 2010, began with the story of how I have been trying to' find a sense of self through art'...  I think I will follow this concept and report my findings here from now on...

I have spent the last thirty years of my life engaged in many different aspects of art, from studying painting, drawing and Turkish decorative arts to exploring the art world through art history classes, museum and gallery visits, following the print-media, websites and literature, even taking part in group illumination exhibits.  It wouldn't be a gross exaggeration to say that Art has been my salvation, anchor, safe haven throughout life's challenges and quandaries.  

All the while, I have been immersing myself in the art world, I also have been searching for a deeper understanding of what was, is and why.  To garner a greater knowledge and mastery over the arts, I enrolled in an art history class this semester - 15th century Italian Renaissance.  The biggest surprise turned out to be the realization of how there are so many unknowns.  That particular time period, I will have to get to at a later post, I think. 


I used to think that there was a wealth of information, facts that historians and artists knew about the who, what, where, when, how and WHY...of most works of art.  It seemed like some people were 'in the know' about these things and the rest of us were either trying to understand or pretend. The biggest news flash for me turned out to be that we are all in the same boat of trying to analyze and understand what came before us and those 'people in the know' just have been studying for longer, have more insight and indepth information than the rest of us, but still are not in possession of all the facts.  This bit of wisdom actually has given me renewed resolve to become a true connoisseur of the arts and interpret it as best I can.    

At this point I must admit a major deficiency in my font of knowledge - my comprehension of modern art seems to be deficient.  As much as I love to learn and talk about art, I can't seem to make any kind of sense when it comes to communicating about anything past the post-impressionists.  This is partly the reason why I went back to see the 'Matisse:  Radical Invention, 1913-1917' exhibit at Moma, one more time, before it closes tomorrow. 


My son and I had already visited the Matisse exhibit in August and I was disappointed in myself for not being able to arouse any kind of interest in him for the works on display, which are some of Matisse's most powerful and enigmatic.  Even though I enjoyed the guided tour, I was not satisfied with the information the docent provided since it mostly felt like a visual analysis.  I left the museum, feeling I had seen some of the greatest works of art but not having added any new facts to what I already knew and even worse - not being able to answer my son's questions about what was so fascinating.  So, I rushed back, literally, yesterday morning, with hopes of finding the answers I was looking for.  Unfortunately the audio-guide the museum provided  wasn't any more enlightening than the docent was.  A very detailed and interesting visual analysis but nothing ground breaking.  But I was thrilled with being able to savor the wonderful paintings that Matisse himself considered so significant in his career.  What was actually most fascinating was the process each painting went through and the amount of work it entailed before it was actually considered 'finished'.  


What most people don't realize is the significance of hard work that goes into producing art, more than the talent.  This exhibit actually concentrated on the details of the manufacturing and the different stages of each painting and sculpture from this period.  Seeing the X-ray images of the sketches and the paintings underneath the final product was akin to visiting Matisse's studio as the works progressed.  Observing each work closely left me with awe of how his mind worked and still wondering how he thought to do what he did.  


I finally came to the conclusion that these works were not ideas that were thought up and just put on canvas but were evolved entities that came into being as the artist dug them out of his subconscious.  These were built up and changed over time and maybe didn't need to have specific discernible explanations.  They should be experienced and appreciated without asking the typical questions of what or why.  The exhibit will be on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from March 20 through June 20 2010.  I know that I would definitely go back to see it again, if I ever got to Chicago during those dates.