MOCA, Market, and World's Shortest Railway

 Los Angeles, CA

Donna is art!

MOCA

Today we road the bus to The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). MOCA has been high on our list of things to do since the beginning of trip planning.  Donna has been going here since the late 80s (when it was The Temporary Contemporary) and she took me here soon after we started dating.  

Entrance to the museum is currently free, made possible by Carolyn Clark Powers.  It would have been "free" for us anyway thanks to our NARM Pass.  

I am not a robot, that says MOCA

Free!  My favorite word.

Currently the museum has only one floor open so it only took about an hour and a half to see everything.  There were some very cool interactive pieces.

A Piet Mondrian.  You probably recognize the style.

Witch House, you could go inside

Donna looking at photography on display

An original Yoko Ono

I liked the shadows this cast

Donna looking at a Mark Rothko

This is an interactive exhibit called Chromosaturation

It consists of 3 rooms lit with 3 different colors

The colors blend as you go around corners

They make you wear slippers so you don't
mar the perfectly white floor

This is Briccs 2

Also interactive

The MOCA sign we saw after leaving was more
interesting than the entrance sign IMHO

When we exited MOCA we saw the Kogi Food Truck and Ran to it only to find out it was only open for a private party.  

I took this before it "opened"

Angels Flight 

Our next checklist item is Angels Flight.  We keep track of Public Transit and Railway and Funiculars and this checks all of those boxes.  It also happens to be the World's Shortest Railway coming in at 298 ft. (91 meters for non-Americans).  

The Station at the top

There are 2 cars counterbalancing each other

$1 said in many ways
(we paid 50 cents because we have a Tap Card)

The seating matches the inline that it is on

Donna is inclined to ride funiculars! (see what I did?)

The cars cross exactly halfway

We might need to come back at night.  I see lights

A car at the top and a car at the bottom

The station at the bottom

There are stairs you can use going up the side.  I thought about racing it up but hunger won the day and we went to Grand Central Market instead.

Grand Central Market

Grand Central Market was another checklist item for us.  It's arguably fits in the top 100 open air markets in the world along with Pike's Place Market in Seattle and The Ferry Building in San Francisco.  To me, it felt more like an open air food stall place rather than a market.  I didn't get the idea that I could go there and buy ingredients to make an entire meal like I could at Pike's Place or The Ferry Building.  That's not a bad thing, just a different thing and there are many fine places to eat in the market.  We enjoyed a bagel at Wexler's Deli and a donut at Donut Man.  There are many other highly rated food stalls there so we may go back another day.

It seems like businesses were required to have a neon sign

The hall of neon and food stalls

More stalls

People seemed to love the sticky rice

We split a smoked sturgeon bagel

We didn't eat a Gummi Fried Egg

One of the coolest Donut signs I have seen

Picking our poison 

Doughnuts stuffed with strawberries, perfect for Instagram

There was a Jarritos Display that was Instagram worthy too

A plaque dedicated to the late Jonathan Gold

I doubt locals use this photo booth but it
does look very Twin Peaks inside

After The Market we walked through Grand Park (I didn't find it that grand) and then walked home.  After hydrating and resting a bit we pulled the van out of its tight spot and acted like an Angelino and drove 1 mile to Numero Uno Market.  I was too tired to walk a mile and then another mile with groceries.

Adventures in cooking with exotic ingredients

One of the things we like to do is visit markets when we travel.  It's interesting to see the fresh ingredients different places across the US and around the world have to offer.  We are in LA so we are going to Mexican markets.  Last time we were there we saw Loroco so we looked up a recipe and purchased the ingredients to make it.  We still have about 3 pounds of sweet rice that we are lugging around so we are trying to use it up. The recipe calls for regular rice but we used our sweet rice and it turned out great.  The dish is from El Salvador and the Loroco was $18.99 a pound but you only need a little for the recipe.  

We also made a Mexican inspired hot corn salad.  Both dishes turned out great and we had an adventure in cooking!

Our bag of Loroco

Donna cooking up some grub

Our Corn Salad

The loroco rice dish

It was another full day.  We checked 3 things off of our LA Area checklist and had a great time.  Now it's time to rest up for tomorrow's adventure!  Spoiler, we get an oil change.

Check out yesterday's adventure here.