Sat, June 7 - Creme Fraiche, Chinatown, Cathedral

11.27am - fresh mango w/ some tasty home made creme fraiche (so easy - add 2 tablespoons of buttermilk to 1 cup of heavy cream, stir well, let sit about 20 h until firm, then refrigerate).12.45h- rice noodle sea food soup and iced tea on the house at Battambang Cambodian Restaurant in LA's Chinatown. Ritesh was out reliving his adolescence today, playing Dungeons and Dragons at a friend's house. So I had the day to explore...

Chinatown is reasonably close to the LA Cathedral (Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels), which was finished just five years ago. I'd never seen it, and since I had found free parking, and in the shade (FREE PARKING! IN THE SHADE!), I decided to walk over there and check it out (just as well, as the Cathedral charges an ungodly parking fee of $3.50 for every 15min). The Cathedral itself is an oddly shaped post-modern architectural wonder that you can circle without managing to figure out where the front or the back is (it has entrances on all sides). But the inside is nice, spacious and airy, with some interesting nooks and crannies. There's also a huge underground mausoleum where you can buy a spot to be buried, even right next to Gregory Peck - I shudder to think for how much, though (multiply $3.50 by every 15 minutes of eternity).
There are a gift shop and a cafe on the grounds, but they were both closed. I did pick up some snacks in Chinatown but was too thirsty to eat them, and there was no place to get a drink. Did I mention it was a really hot day? So there's no food in these pictures, but I wanted to show them anyway.
This is the outside of the cathedral, with that vaguely Middle Eastern look of a stage set for a Jesus play.

14.51h - the Cathedral's bell tower

14.53h - and some angelic engraving on a window from the Cathedral garden out to the 101 Freeway - the Cathedral is nothing if not conveniently located.

15.25h - I was still thirsty so decided to walk a few blocks to find something to drink. So I walked past the Opera House, the LA Superior Court and the Walt Disney Concert hall below, without much luck. Granted, not the greatest neighborhood to find a convenience store. But come on, not even a chain coffee house? Where's a Starbucks when you need one? The Concert Hall does have a gift shop and it was even open, but they sell mostly LA Philharmonic paraphernalia such as cello-shaped refrigerator magnets, but nothing as prosaic as a bottle of water. So I kept walking ...

15.43h - ... until I got lucky: Vitamin Water from the Patinette Cafe inside the Museum of Contemporary Art, along with a sweet onion roll from Chinatown, and to the right of that, a sweet Chinese rice cake so white you can barely make it out on top of the white paper bag. The area behind the museum is a good little place to hang out and watch the tourists take pictures of the outdoors art exhibits. So I just sat and relaxed and watched and kind of felt like a tourist myself. It's good to be a tourist in your own town sometimes, go places you don't normally go, see new things, try new things and just appreciate whatever it is you stumble across.

19.07h - back home - fresh cherries from Chinatown, new glass bowl and its wrapping paper from Japantown.

20.22h - the new pepper-crusted turkey sandwich from Subway, plus some habanero Doritos, shared with Ritesh, who returned unscathed if hungry from his many adventures in D&D land.

20.39h - a Hershey's bar Ritesh brought home, shared w/ Ritesh.