I was getting down to the wire. It was the final weekend of the Coffeeneuring Challenge. I had two days to get in my two final outings. Much to my delight, I had a bicycle-loving house guest who was happy to join me that Saturday morning. I thought it would be fun to show her some of the local architectural and culinary goodies. Besides, charming Larchmont village is just a couple miles from my home, and yet it has more coffee shops than I have yet visited, so something really must be done about that.
My guest for this ride, Judi, is big on bike touring and seeing the world. On a recent trip, Judi spent several months seeing Hawaii, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and New Zealand. You can see her pics from that trip and others on her Flickr page. We met when I saw her post to the Los Angeles Women & Bicycles Facebook page, asking when the next coffee meetup was planned. When I asked what part of town she was in, she replied that she was looking for a place to stay for the next few weeks while visiting. And with our kids out of the house leaving empty bedrooms behind, I figured it was a perfect chance to practice our bed & breakfast services. It was so fun to have a bicyclista staying at our home.
Judi and I rode north into Hancock Park to the northernmost end of Larchmont to check out Coffee + Food, a place on Melrose I’d found in my online research for coffeeneuring destinations. Bike parking was easy to find close to the front of the shop. We went inside and made our selections. I had a flat white coffee with caramel, just because I had never had a “flat white” before, and got some kind of sweet cinnamon thing to go with it. Judi went for a drip coffee and a breakfast burrito.
If, like me, you need a tutorial on what the heck a “flat white” is, here’s the low down. The quick answer: it’s like a latte, but with less milk and less frothy.
We wandered through Koreatown on our way back, stopping by Alexandria House. Just the night before, we’d been at a neighbor’s house for a fundraising party in support of this shelter that provides transitional housing and other resources for women and children. We stopped inside for a bit, and saw a group of women and teens getting makeovers. It’s a gorgeous house, and it was filled with warm and wonderful people.
We completed a loop back towards home, turning our short ride into a respectable 9.1 mile route.
The short dip along the southern edge of our loop (between Wilton Place & Crenshaw) is where I just had to show Judi my favorite mansion in Country Club Park, that has apparently been seen in a show called American Horror Story. The short dip near the northeast part of our loop is where we stopped to check out Alexandria House.
Total mileage: 9.1
Bike: Specialized Dolce Comp
Destination: Coffee + Food, Larchmont Village, Los Angeles
Beverage: Flat White
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