Mom's West Coast Architecture Tour: Part Four

Need to get caught up?  Here's Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Okay, so full disclosure time.  This particular blog entry won't have any real architecture, or at least any that could possibly compete with the Stahl or Eames houses or the Getty Villa.  In fairness, though, there's not much that could, right?

Anywhoo, on Mom's last day with us here in California, she and I spent most of the day doing more work in the house.  While I made some calls to contractors and whatnot to get the ball rolling on different projects, she started hanging pictures in the different rooms of the house.  We have an awful lot of artwork and photos, so this is quite an undertaking (you'll have to ask her whether organizing the books or hanging the photos was the more annoying task).  We had a smorgasbord lunch (you know, where you just randomly eat whatever you find in the fridge), and afterward, we headed out to run some errands and show her our new city.

After stops at Sheets N Shit (our generic name for any Bed, Bath, and Beyond/Linens N Things type place), PetsMart, and Sam's Club, we headed down the 405 freeway to where it dumps into the beach actually known as Long Beach, in the area of Belmont Shores.  We wandered along the Pier in the area and Mom dipped her toes in the Pacific (she'd like it to be known that she's done this from the Hawaii side of the ocean, but not the California side)!

Lots of fishing going on behind me.

It's chilly!

We also looked up and down the shore, checking out the new digs:

Check out all the kite surfers!

It was a windy day.

Part of the Long Beach bike path.
You may recall a very similar set of photos
from the half marathon blog a few weeks ago.
We crossed right through this area...

The Queen Mary and part of the Port of Long Beach.
That's the Long Beach Cruiser Terminal as well
(the big dome).

Looking west toward downtown

One of the three islands in the harbor;
they're all working oil rigs
and are named after the three astronauts
who perished in the Apollo 1 fire:

Grissom, Chaffee, and White.

After our meter expired in Belmont Shores, we hopped back in the car and headed toward downtown Long Beach along Ocean Avenue and then Shoreline Drive; I even got to show Mom some of the marathon course as well ("and that's where I almost passed out from heat exhaustion, and that's where a nice man gave me a bag of ice from his own freezer, and that's where a lady vomited on the curb..." Good times).  After that, we headed back north and swung through the Wrigley area, where we put offers in on a few houses that didn't go through prior to buying our current house (yup, Wrigley in this case is the gum magnate; the area has his name due to the several streets of houses he had built for his employees in the 1920s or so).  After that, it was back home to Bixby Knolls, where we once again waited for Chris to come home to eat dinner and drink some wine (well, we may not have waited on him to start this), toasting our time together!

While Mom was here, we saw tons of cool stuff, but we're just beginning to explore the area and all it has to offer.  The next time she comes, I'm sure we'll find all sorts of other things to show her!

Later!

Amy