The Getty Center up in the hills just outside LA. Definitely worth a visit.
We ended up walking about eight miles on Monday – so our little legs were tired at the end of the day. Tuesday, however, was a brand new day and we elected to take an Uber to the Getty Center up in the hills of LA.
There are actually two Getty places in LA, both different so if I were you, I’d research both and see which one meets your needs. One is more of a villa-type place (with some museum stuff) and the other is a giant research museum with unbelievable architecture high up in the hills. That’s the one we went to and we ended up spending five hours there just piddling around looking at the various exhibitions and taking one of their docent-led architecture tours with a very entertaining person in charge. (All free, btw, and really recommended.)
One of the views at the Getty…
Loads of things to look at, ranging from photography to Old World Artists, alongside contemporary work and the most amazing architecture (by Richard Meier). The brilliant white of the walls and corners contrasted brightly with the blue sky and it was fantastic.
And then inside one of the buildings of the Getty… And some innovative landscaping as well… It looks rather stark here, but it’s a perfect complement with the architecture.
The hotel we stayed with the wonderful Marina del Rey Hotel, a renovated 1964 hotel on the end of one of the many boat piers around Venice Beach. Super service, lovely people, walkable to a lot of places (including our first Trader Joe experience!) and just loved it.
I have to thank my mum for the trip! 🙂
Some of the contemporary art in the Marina del Rey Hotel.
My lovely mum has been staying over Christmas here in the States, first some time with me here in Texas and then a few days up in Northern California with my sister. As that trip with my sister was coming to a close, mum suddenly phoned me up and invited me to come with her on a whistle-stop visit to Los Angeles, and who am I to say no to that? So, I didn’t. 🙂
We had a fab time. In the end, it was two days in the City of Angels but we got to see a load of things in that short time. Let’s proceed…
You know how I like to research before I go anywhere interesting, but with this quick turnaround, I hadn’t had that much time to do much more than actually visit the library to pick up some info there. On the plane out to the West Coast, I learned more about the history of LA, and more specifically, the history of Venice Beach (which was the area where we would be staying).
Beside one of the canals in the Venice Beach neighborhood. You might need to search hard for this area, but it’s so worth it. It’s a quiet and relaxing world. just steps away from the streets of LA.
This area of town was started, I think, by a man who happened to be a very wealthy tobacco magnate and who was enamored with Venice, Italy, after his travels there. Wanting to replicate this city on the West Coast, this guy developed some of the wetlands (on which LA was being built) and designed a neighborhood with great architecture and on the pattern of Venice, complete with actual canals and gondolas and small curving bridges to get from one side to the other. Only about three miles of these original canals still exist after all this time, and they happen to be in – guess where? – Venice Beach.
So, after quite a bit of tromping around not really getting anywhere useful, we finally asked a friendly local walking his dog if he knew where these canals were and he kindly took us there. (It turned out that this friendly local was actually an expat from Texas… Huh. Small World.)
So mum and I spent quite a bit of wandering around this neighborhood being amazed at the whole thing. The canals are still there, with water and with occasional watercraft, but the waterside does need a general spruce-up. (The real estate prices were unbelievable: one place was going for $3.6 MILLION. Another place could be rented for $12,000/month. You know, if you’re interested.)
So that was fun. We then spent some time wandering along the Oceanfront Path at Venice Beach, people-watching and beach-walking and admiring the sea. Bliss. Then, my mum’s sharp eyes spotted a tiny little bookshop (naturally!). Tucked in a corner of a bigger building, mostly a restaurant, there was the Small World Books shop, a small but excellently-stocked bookshop in between t-shirt and henna shops. A little blissful world of books, which we ended up supporting (as you do). Definitely worth a visit, but you’ll need to keep your eyes peeled as it’s quite easy to miss if you’re looking the other way (at the beach, for example).
Then, after all that, our legs got tired so we walked to the hotel to chill out a bit and then have a bit of a supper. We ended up walking about eight miles on this first day. :-}
The view outside our hotel’s location. Boats, boats and more boats.
Just One More Page... 