Travel Blog

The art walk in downtown was sparsely attended - it gets cold in Southern California in January - so I stepped into the bar of the Utopia restaurant.

A man with grey hair sat with his back to the window playing the piano. I chatted with the manager, who had been born in Iran, and then another man, who had landed in Long Beach after starting in San Diego.

"It's an urban setting next to the sea," he explained. "Where else do you have that in the States? San Francisco, New York."

"Miami," I said.

"Miami," he said dismissively. "I was there last year. Every place I went it was "BOOM ba BOOM ba BOOM ba BOOM. Even in a restaurant that looked like this," he said, giving a look around the quintessential corner bistrot.

"It's why I came in here," I told him. "It's hard to find a piano bar in Miami."

"I ended up going to the Ritz-Carlton every night," he said.

Doug invited the woman sitting by herself to join us at the bar; he and Denise, it turned out, were good friends. Then he poured us each a glass of red wine. He was a big proponent of the city, and lived in its stateliest building, the Villa Riviera on Ocean Boulevard. I had noticed its steep sea-green roof and lone pointy tower the day I arrived. It had an association with Mary Pickford and looked like a kind of high-rise chateau.

The pianist was terrific; we applauded appreciatively at the end of each number. Eventually he came over and joined us. His name was Joe and he had an endearing soft-spokenness.

Doug was a lawyer and photographer. He handed me his card, which carried a black-and-white photograph of an interestingly enfolded nude. He asked if I'd been to the Sky Bar at the top of the old Breakers Hotel. When I said no, he suggested we go, and we all headed out into the brisk night. I began wishing I were on assignment instead of vacation.

Now a retirement home, the Breakers still rises grandly on Ocean Boulevard. We took the elevator to the next-to-last floor and walked into a dining room that looked like a lounge from the QE2, circa 1975. A few couples clung to each other on the dance floor.

Then we climbed the steps to the bar at the top. It was open air, with clear plastic windows at the bottom of each Gothic archway. Doug bought everyone a Maker's Mark and pointed out the gun turret above, which, he said, had been added to the tower during World War II to shoot at invading Japanese ships. A few freighters floated in the distance and, adding to the illuminations of the port, was a golden string of lights atop the Queen Mary. I sipped my very urbane drink and gazed out over the cold dark sea.