Every once in a while Tasha and I will have a real adventure at lunch time.  A few weeks ago we went looking for a CPK and by the time we got to it we’d spent half of our hour on a street with way too many red lights.  Yesterday’s adventure doesn’t technically count as a lunch time adventure because we were actually at a trade show but it still counts as an adventure nonetheless.

The trade show was at the Long Beach Convention Center.  Neither one of us had been there before so we had no idea where to park.  The GPS dropped us off right in front of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center which, apparently, is attached to the Convention Center, but, being tourists, we didn’t know that.  We ended up parking in some underground condo parking lot.  We had no idea where to go from there so we just started walking.  Neither one of us was wearing walking shoes as we were dressed for a trade show not for wandering around.  We walked into the admin offices at the Performing Arts Center and got directions.  Then we had to walk about three blocks to get to the convention center.  Yeah – we would have moved the car but we’d already paid eight bucks (!) to park it.

We found the trade show, found our booth, chatted with the other peeps there and then walked the floor.  After seeing all there was to see, including the restrooms, we took a short walk to the cute little harbor right across the street.  The Convention Center being the size that it is though, it was another two blocks to get there.  By the time we got close enough to see everything both of us felt like our feet were going to fall off.  Tasha was in worse shape than I was as she was wearing heals and everything outside was concrete.  There wasn’t anywhere close enough to buy some sandals at so we had to just keep going.

It was BEAUTIFUL outside that day and it was so nice to be out in the nice ocean breeze.  I’m still a little sunburned from last weekend’s trip to the beach with the Barneys but it was still so nice to be outside for a change.  After taking some pics of downtown Long Beach, we headed back to the car so she could get me to the train station in time to go home.  We decided to take a short cut and ended up behind the convention center in the shipping and receiving section of the building.  We could see the row of doors that we needed to get through in order to shorten our trip to the car and made our way over there only to find that they were all tied and locked shut.  Luckily there was someone inside that pointed us to a strange backdoor entrance.  Once inside, we found that the other doors that we needed to get through were also tied shut.  We ended up wandering around all the service places in the Convention and Performing Arts Centers.  We finally found a door that lead to a hallway that lead to the side entrance of the admin office that we had walked into looking for directions in the beginning.  From there it was easy to find our way back to the car – at least it was for me.  Poor Tasha’s feet were hurting so bad that she’d lost all sense of direction.  By this time we were both laughing so hard that it was a bit of a miracle that we were able to keep walking.

Anyway…  here are some pictures that I took down at the harbor yesterday.  The one of the really tall building with the green roof I took in the car on our way out of LB.  All in all an eventful and interesting day.

Downtown Long Beach

The Harbor

The Harbor

Endless Dreams and a Lighthouse

Sea Gulls Taking a Bath

Random Building with a Green Roof