Vacation 2013 Day 1

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There are many reasons to take public transportation, not the least of which is because CutieLittleBoy asks repeatedly to get on the "bus/train".

So we agree: Vacation Day 1 is all about riding the bus/train. 

For those of my readers who take public transportation every day, please stop laughing.

I once read an article by a man involved in urban ministry who preached the necessity of teaching children how to use public transportation. As a rite of passage he took each of his three children downtown at the age of five and assigned them the task of making it back home by themselves. (I could possibly be wrong about the age, but it was shockingly early.) As a postscript he included the comment that he secretly shadowed his children to make sure they were safe, but I always figured he included that only at the insistence of his wife who likely spent the entire day sitting at the kitchen table biting her nails and watching the second hand inch around the clock.

Not that I want to make this tradition a model of mine, but he made several good arguments about the benefit of knowing public transportation. And if I can teach my two year old the basics of riding a bus and subway, maybe he can avoid being stopped by the police in Italy for not realizing he needed to validate his ticket after purchasing: a little domestic vacation practice now and future international vacations will be much more enjoyable.

As a side note, if you don't know how to ride the Los Angeles metro system, now is a great time to do so. They recently updated their system of purchasing fares and so have many explicit directions and reminders to help the uninitiated.

So CutieLittleBoy got his ride on the "bus/train". We caught the bus at the nearest transportation hub and rode it until we could transfer to the Metrolink underground. While we had planned for a more extensive excursion, we kind of forgot that California has not yet attained speed rail systems. After a wee bit of window shopping and grabbing lunch at a downtown cafe (and hunting high and low for functional, available restrooms), it was time to make our return trip. 

An inexpensive metro day pass, a little boy's special request, and skipping parking fees and gas mileage? That'll do for Vacation Day 1.

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