Road Trip Day 16

Got up, had breakfast, and bid farewell to my wonderful hosts and headed for the Getty.  Nelson had given me good directions, thank goodness, because this involved some serious LA freeway driving, including going past LAX on the 405.  Thank goodness it was Sunday morning.  To drive the LA freeways, you need to have nerves of steel, be highly caffeinated, and have some sense of where you're going.

Successfully made it to the Getty Museum, which is perched high on a hill overlooking LA.  Fascinating architecture.  Richard Meier built the center with 16,000 tons of travertine from Bagni de Tivoli in Italy. It's roughly hewn and absolutely gorgeous.  It's all organized on a grid system with different variations on a 36-inch grid.  Even the trees are planted in 36-inch spacing.  I took a tour of the gardens, which was very informative.

The views from up there are stunning.  You can see the layer of smog that hangs over LA, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Pacific Ocean.

I toured the expressionist galleries and then had a quick lunch because I wanted to catch the tour of a special exhibit of French illuminated manuscripts from 1500 which had taken the museum 8 years to put together.  It was fascinating to see those gorgeous books, scrolls, and tapestries.  Imagine lavishing such care on books and creating them all by hand.  The guide had samples of the sheepskin parchment for us to feel--it's smooth on the side they wrote on and rougher on the side where the hair was.  She said it could take an entire heard of sheep to produce one book.

One other note on the Getty:  Meier knew what he was doing when he designed the stairs.  They're wide (probably 18 inches) with about a 6 inch rise.  Very easy to climb.  All stairs should be built this way!

I could have stayed longer, but didn't want museum fatigue to set in, so I called it good and headed for Santa Barbara and my reunion with some of the women I went to college with.  Arrived at the Harbor View Inn around 4:00 p.m.  This is a hotel right on the corner of State Street and Cabrillo Boulevard, directly across from the beach and Stearns Wharf.  Since I picked it off the internet, I was hoping it would turn out to be a good place for us to hang out for four days.

It lived up to its advance billing.  Our rooms face the pool and the ocean and have lovely terraces where we can gather for cocktail hour or just to relax and visit.  The location is perfect--both the trolleys run right past the property.

Tonight we walked down to the harbor and had dinner at Brophy Brothers Clam Bar & Restaurant, a restaurant recommended by the cab driver who brought Pat, Mary, and Joey from the airport.  We retired early because the Minnesotans were suffering from time change lag and they had been up early to catch their flights here.  Anne, coming from Washington, is at least still in the same time zone.  I've been in this time zone a while, but was tired from all the walking at the Getty (not to mention the LA freeway driving!).