Highland perk was just the ticket

As regular readers know, I take Metrolink for day trips whenever I can, which isn’t as often as I’d like, in part because it seems like a full-day thing and full days are rare. Sunday, though, I made it a half-day thing just for lunch.

There are numerous good restaurants near a transit stop in L.A. Why not just go have lunch somewhere new and fun? I decided to try Good Girl Dinette, a Highland Park cafe that bills itself as “American diner meets Vietnamese comfort food” and which made LA Weekly’s LA 99 list of notable restaurants.

So I got on the 11:39 a.m. train from Claremont with an armful of reading material (Sunday papers, an LA Weekly, an IE Weekly, Westways magazine, two Record Collector News issues and Mark Twain’s “Roughing It”), took the Gold Line light rail trolley to the Highland Park stop, walked two blocks in an unfamiliar part of L.A. to the restaurant, had a satisfying repast (beef stew, housemade lemon pop, bread pudding) for $24, walked back to the light rail stop, took the Gold Line back to Union Station and immediately got on Metrolink for the ride back home, arriving in Claremont at 4:20 p.m. carrying only the Twain book, having shed everything else as I read it.

Yes, the ride cost $11, making this a long and slightly pricey meal, but it was worth the extra time and cost to have a mini-adventure, one with almost no unproductive time. The smooth, air-conditioned ride certainly wasn’t roughing it (ahem).

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