Los Angeles: Four Weeks at the Sunset Tower

The Sunset Tower Hotel was built in 1931 on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Art Deco. Curved walls. Original moldings. John Wayne lived here. Howard Hughes kept a suite upstairs. Bugsy Siegel had an apartment. We checked in for nearly four weeks in mid-November, straight from Vienna. LA was the last stop before heading back to Toronto for Christmas.

The first few days were about the hotel itself. The rooms have personality that most modern hotels have designed out of themselves. High floors facing west look toward the Pacific, and on a clear day you can see the ocean. The windows are original, the curtains are heavy, and the morning light comes through warm and gold. You stay at the Sunset Tower because you'd rather be in a room where history happened than a room where someone recently filmed a TikTok.

We ate at the Tower Bar our first night and then probably six more times over four weeks. Dark lighting, leather booths in a crescent, a pianist playing standards. The McCarthy salad is the house signature. The Tower burger is excellent. The Dover sole is old-school and done right. By the end, the bartender knew G's wine order and my usual seat. That's the upside of a long stay: restaurants stop treating you like a guest and start treating you like furniture. Good furniture.

The outdoor dining situation in LA at the time was its own experience. Restaurants had built elaborate patio setups in parking lots with heat lamps, string lights, and sometimes actual trees trucked in from nurseries. In LA, where it's still 70 degrees and sunny in November, it worked.

One of our first real dinners out was Catch LA on Melrose. Rooftop, Hollywood sign in the background, seafood, the truffle sashimi and crispy rice are the orders. We went on a Tuesday to dodge the weekend crowd.

A few nights later, Dan Tana's on Santa Monica Boulevard. The opposite of Catch in every way. Old-school West Hollywood Italian, open since 1964. Red leather booths packed so tight your knees touch the person across from you. The menu hasn't changed in decades. G looked at the chicken parm when it arrived and said "no way" and then cleaned the plate. The garlic bread comes dripping with butter. The Dabney Coleman salad (named after the actor, a regular for decades) is a chopped salad with Italian dressing that people have been ordering since before I was born. The waiters have worked there for years, and if you look uncertain, they'll order for you. Let them. Dan Tana's doesn't do reservations in the normal sense. Show up early and wait at the bar with a Negroni.

On our days off from eating, we explored. The Getty Center was a weekday morning trip. Free admission, $20 parking. Richard Meier's architecture is worth the drive up the hill on its own. The Robert Irwin central garden changes with the seasons. The terrace views stretch from downtown to the Pacific.

Another afternoon we hiked to Griffith Observatory from the Fern Dell entrance on the west side. About 45 minutes, mostly shaded. We timed it for 30 minutes before sunset and watched the city go from daylight to golden hour to a carpet of lights. We sat on the lawn until our hands got cold, which in LA terms means it was maybe 55 degrees.

The Broad Museum downtown was a rainy day choice (yes, it rains in LA, rarely, and when it does the city acts like the world is ending). Free admission, timed tickets. Koons, Basquiat, Warhol, Lichtenstein. The Infinity Mirrored Room by Kusama requires a separate timed entry and is worth the logistics. LACMA on the Miracle Mile was another afternoon: the Urban Light installation out front is one of the most photographed spots in the city.

One weekend we drove PCH to Malibu. About 45 minutes from West Hollywood on a weekday (don't attempt this on a Saturday). El Matador Beach is the most photogenic beach in the LA area: sea stacks, caves, cliffs, almost no crowd because the parking lot is small and the staircase down is steep. We ate at Nobu Malibu right on the sand afterward. The yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno and the black cod miso are worth the drive and the prices.

We flew back to Toronto for Christmas and tried to settle back into normal life. The next year would bring the move to Florida.