July 26th. Culver City Expo Line. Mo-Chica. Grand Park. Dinner Salad

Long planned lunch date for DineLA with Marci, Linda and Natasha.  After a quick trip to Home Depot to check out refrigerator for for New Jersey, met everyone at Marci's and headed for the new Culver City light rail station. I'd used the Blue Line years ago and the Red Line too, but this was my first voyage on the Metro Expo Line which just opened its western-most outpost in Culver City.
After parking in huge free lot, we bought four senior discount tickets (25¢ each!) and road the train to its terminus at 7th and Figueroa.  It was a splendid ride, traversing neighborhoods both residential and industrial, and passing minutes from USC, the Staples Center, the Museum of Natural History, Exposition Park-- destination worthy spots).  From there, it was a short walk to our destination--Mo-Chica, the just-relocated and much touted Peruvian Restaurant on 7th Street for its DineLA lunch.  The ride was so fast, we arrived a bit early, so got to wander through Bottega Louie.  It's been open for years now, but I have been so out-of-town and so behind in my downtown development lore, it was completely new to me.  I've fallen ridiculously  behind in my inadequate food photography as well, but couldn't resist recording a sampling of their pastries.

Unsampled, but still dazzling desserts at Bottega Louie

We admired, but were very controlled and purchased none of above.  Instead, as planned, we had quite an excellent lunch at Mo-chica--where we had quite an excellent lunch.  We eschewed the alpaca as perhaps too cuddly, but ordered many other unknown dishes; the entire menu was relatively unexplored territory, and given that we were four, we could do a broad sampling.   Most were stews of one sort or another with quinoa or rice--surprising and tasty variations on comfort food (to emphasize that comfort point--two of the four were served topped with a fried egg).  And although I don't think we expected it, the desserts---a seriously fruited creme brulee and alfajores (peruvian sandwich cookies) filled with dulce de leche best of all.

AFter lunch, we expanded our downtown explorations with a visit to the brand new Grand Avenue Park.  With its expanded fountain, which stretched into a huge watery sliding surface and it's many flamingo pink benches and chairs, it held out another whiff of the elusive  promise of an ever livelier downtown.

Thinking ourselves quite clever, we decided to get the Red Line at the Civic Center stop and switch at 7th to the Metro Expo Line.  It was now peak hours, so our tickets were now 55¢.  Marci (who had done actual pre-trip research unlike the rest of us) said that she thought that ticket would only be for the Red line, not the trip to Culver City.  That didn't make sense to us.  We saw the map.  It was clearly marked that the two lines intersected--in our sense of subway protocol, this meant free-transfer.  These feelings were confirmed, when we got off the train at 7th street, and saw a waiting train (looking like it was waiting just for us) on the platform just above.  A Metro employee confirmed that this was indeed our train and we jumped on, congratulating ourselves for our Los Angeles public transport savvy.
We had to stop singing our praises at the La Brea stop, where we were asked to present our tickets to two sheriffs (you buy your tickets, but don't have turnstiles or other entry points--there are just random checks on the trains.  We proudly showed our four tickets, and were promptly told that they would not do the trick (Marci had been right.  You need a separate ticket for every line!  Is that possible?).  We pulled out all our well-rehearsed arguments, and in the course of discussion managed to travel one station closer to our destination, but no luck.  We were told that unless we got off the train and bought new tickets, we would be fined $75 a piece.  So much for our bargain outing!  We did as we were told.  We went down the stairs, bought four more tickets from the machines and returned to the platform.  As an extra bonus, or reminder of the seriousness of our offense, the sheriff appeared to be waiting for us on the platform--making sure we were following all instructions.  She  then asked if we were really senior citizens (perhaps she thought we were double criminals, or maybe it was just a joke).  In any case, we will now (and advice everyone else) to read up on the relatively Byzantine payment policies of our otherwise very promising new Metro system.
Took advantage of being in my car for a stop at Trader Joe's on the way home.  Finally I could buy coffee ice cream as well as two ears of corn, three pounds of cherries, organic strawberries and a few other essentials.