Last weekend, a one-day trip to Los Angeles found me back on a train to avoid the stress of driving and traffic. The Solana Beach station has a large parking lot which (so far) is still free. Just as I got in the car to drive to the station, Amtrak started blowing up my cellphone with delay alerts. My stomach dropped as a result of my previous Amtrak experience when the train was delayed by almost an hour. Fortunately, the delay was only about five minutes this time. Phew!
Designed by architect Rob Wellington Quigley, the Solana Beach station was built in 1994. The trip was fairly uneventful, other than two Spicoli kids who were yapping the entire time. Between the “dudes” and the “bros,” the departure at Fullerton couldn’t have come quickly enough!
Arriving at LA’s Union Station is almost like Dorothy entering Oz. Designed by the father-and-son architect team of John and Donald Parkinson, it is an impressive melding of Spanish Colonial, Mission Revival, and Art Deco architecture. The station still looks fantastic and appeared to be fairly well-monitored to keep it safe for the passengers.
When one exits the station, the fantasy begins to crumble as the smell of weed, urine, and the shouting of crackheads encourage one to keep moving briskly to avoid any trouble
On this visit, I checked out the Imperial Western Beer Company at the South Patio, formerly the Fred Harvey House restaurant, which was designed by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, who served as the Fred Harvey Company’s interior designer and architect. The tile floor is meant to look like a Navajo rug.
The Harvey restaurant closed in 1967 and became an event space/filming location.
And then it was time for me to make my way to my appointment, so I began hoofing it to downtown LA.
I’m not sure when this was installed, but this time I noticed this little plaque in the sidewalk about Union Station:
See more LA Union Station photos at my main website.
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