Vegan College Tour: First Stop L.A.

As some of you have surmised and some of you may actually know, I have a daughter who is a senior in highschool.  I know, I know I am Lauren Graham in Gilmore Girls surely, I cannot be that old I look too BEYOOTIFUL for that...but alack and alas I assure you, I am that bleeping old.  So enough about me, like all good parents of children of a certain age, I have spent an enormous part of the last year traveling the globe...or at least the contingenous US to look at schools.  What pray tell does this have to do with MOFO?  Well, I have been traveling vegan and therefore have had the pleasure of sampling the wares of a few of our fine cities and am prepared to share my findings with you. 

Our first stop was Los Angeles, CA home to USC and neighbor to Chapman University in Orange.  This required a transcontinental flight via Continental Airlines which at that time still served food for this length flight.  Due to numerous nightmare stories about airplane food and mix ups with special requests, we flew fully prepared with Lara Bars, Trail Mixes and other goodies.  To our surprise and chagrin (we were stuffed with junk food)  our breakfast was not only vegan (or pure vegetarian as the menu stated) but edible.  We were served a breakfast sandwich with consisted of a vegan sausage pattie and soy cheese on a vegan english muffin , which was quite good.  Also we were given a quinoa salad, fresh fruit and a vegan chocolate chip cookie.  Our neighbors who were given some horrific looking omelette in a pita thing looked jealous of our food.  So other than the fact that airplanes appear to have severely shrunk the seat sizes and leg room and the high strung passengers we shared our plane with, the flight to LA was pretty good.

We arrived at LAX and proceeded to our hotel, the Hilton Checkers downtown.  I should at this point bring up a rule of our college tours which was that my daughter and I would not use a form of transportation that she would not have available to her while at school.  Which means in a nutshell, we were doing LA by public transportation and shuttle.  So our hotel's proximity to both subway and bus lines was great.  We checked in, dropped off our luggage and jet lag and all took the subway to Hollywood., where our adventure will continue tommorrow.