Lots and lots of coffee later, we headed out from breakfast in the hotel for the Getty Villa. Very nice place! It was a steep drive up the driveway, with a beautiful landscaped area surrounding the driveway. The villa has a good sized amphitheater at the entrance of what looks like a renovated villa. It was designed to look like an excavation site, and was gorgeously done! There were different kinds of stone everywhere, and the building was designed with an old villa in mind. It's packed with greek and roman antiquities and reproductions. When you walk in there's a gorgeous little pool surrounded by little sculptures. The gardens are gorgeous and there's a long, shallow wading pool on one side with gorgeous sculptures around it.
We spent a couple of hours and did a short tour, then headed over to the Getty Museum cafe for lunch. There were gorgeous views overlooking the gardens. The museum was just magnificent and huge, with huge limestone blocks creating the lower sides of the buildings, and some really magnificent pieces of art from the masters. What's truly amazing is this is J. Paul Getty's personal art collection. It rivaled some of the museums I've seen around the world, and this was funded entirely by one man. Pretty impressive!
We walked around the gardens a bit and checked out the sculpture garden but it started pouring pretty heavily and was getting muddy, so we decided to head out. By now it was already 4:30 or so. Traffic was pretty bad but we made our way over to the Hollywood area and drove up the steep hillside into Griffin park to see the overlook and Griffin Planetarium. What an amazing view of the city! When it's not cloudy you can easily see the Hollywood sign, and even with the weather we had an amazing view of the lights of LA. The planetarium was amazing as well, and I enjoyed exploring it a bit.
We decided to grab dinner, so we went to this fabulous little 70s style diner just down the street. It was complete with formica and a jukebox! We got total american comfort food (I got mac and cheese and Jason got meatloaf), and while I had big plans of a milkshake for dessert, I was too full after a little more than half of the dinner! We stayed a long time talking then made our way back to the hotel. I was really tired but splashed cold water on my face and rallied to make our way up to the roof bar at our hotel. What a blast! They had heat lamps, a cozy outdoor sofa, plastic chairs which were surprisingly comfortable, and of course, a pool, a bar and music. And a movie projected on a nearby building! It was quite funny to be watching a movie, which was the making of some campy 1970's style movie with robots. Hilarious!
Having a blast, so hey, I'm willing to give LA a nod. I'm not sure I'd live here, but I'm loving my visit and looking forward to the adventures of tomorrow!
Sam
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