Los Angeles

Usually when my family travels to California we stay with my friends and family. But over the last winter break, my wife, son and I took an unexpected trip to California due to an illness in my family. Due to the short notice, we stayed in a motel rather than with friends. Which allows me to do a review for my readers who might travel to Los Angeles.

We flew in on Christmas day. Late. We got our luggage and rented our biodiesel Jetta and drove to our hotel.

I picked out hotel based only on proximity to my mother (who lives near the LA County Museum of Art and La Brea Tar Pits) and low cost. Looking through a bunch of hotels, mostly too expensive or too far from my mother (we could have gotten a GREAT deal on a room in Little Tokyo in a NICE hotel, but it was too far). But one was a perfect balance of cheap and close to where we needed to be in the Mid-Wlishire district: The Beverly-Laurel Moter Hotel on the corner of Beverly Blvd and Laurel.

When my wife looked into it, we got worried. It was billed as a "hipster" place where young, cool people stay and party all night. Well...we are not so young, not hipsters and have a three year old. I was worried that we would have trouble sleeping and would spoil the hipster image of the hotel. I mean a nerdy family with a three year old doesn't exactly make for "cool."

Joy, Jacob and I travelled to California in December to visit my family. Even after 10 years in NYC, I still miss living in California. I am so much more relaxed and happy in California. Sure, NYC is more exciting and it is far easier to get around without a car in NYC, which I greatly appreciate. But Los Angeles is still my favorite city to live in, with the possible exception of Kyoto which was WONDERFUL to live in as well.

Got a lot to blog about that trip, including some restaurant reviews. But first I want to blog about car rentals. Joy and I don't own a car, but we rent whenever we need a car. Whenever we can, we rent a green alternative kind of car. Which means slowly we are gaining personal experience with several kinds of car rentals in Los Angeles...and many options are available elsewhere.

We are willing to spend somewhat extra for a green car, particularly since you save money on gas. But sometimes the difference in cost is too much, so we just rent a regular car with good gas milage. But I always feel better when we can rent an actual green car.

This last trip we rented a biodiesel through a company based in Hawaii that specializes in biodiesal Volkswagen rentals. The company is called bio-beetle. We rented a Jetta, not the eponymous bio-Beetle. Jacob loved calling our car "The Bio-Jetta," and would greet it every time we got in, "Hi Bio-Jetta!"

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