Los Angeles Union Station is the closest you can get to a Grand Central of the “other” coast. The majestic old structure boasts Spanish stucco and missionary mosaics that perfectly typify the Westerns I used to re-enact as a kid. This is the kind of place that can intoxicate the imagination and resurrect latent daydreams as dusty as the West in which it was built. Dragging suitcase and self along the aisles, I could very well have been a runaway, plotting my escape to Albuquerque (a place that was, to my 10-year-old self, the closest to “exotic” an American city could sound).
