I lived in LA city-proper for 5 years and discovered very little of what it had to offer. My adventures were confined strictly to the Westwood/Santa Monica/South Bay area and it is only now that we've moved back down South to the OC that I find myself discovering LA and regretting that I didn't do it sooner. I guess it's true that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
Maybe it was because I didn't have a kid then, but I never knew Griffith Park had a little old train depot and museum hidden in it hills. We took the boys up there this weekend to hang out and to get a close-up look at the old engines. The Kid and AJT are totally into trains at the moment; like all other 3 year olds they discovered the magic of Thomas and the Island of Sodor and are now fascinated by the engines and the sounds and the locomotion. Growing up I knew that my dad and my grandpa had a special bond over train sets and now looking back I see how sweet it is to have that kind of bond with your child. Every year my dad would send my grandpa a new set and they would talk every now and then on the phone about the latest train set the latest set up my grandpa had configured. Being a girl, I never got into it, but now as I've had to learn all the parts of the train and the varying scales in order to impress my 3 year old, I've fallen in love with the romanticized notion of train travel. I can imagine the excitement of hearing the whistle as a train pulled into a station and the anticipation of voyages to new frontiers and new adventures. Honestly, I don't know who enjoyed the trip to Travel Town more, me or the kids. It was all I could do not to buy all the retro railroad pins and all the little tin trains. Definitely a place we'll return to soon.
