Becky's photoblog

Before heading to LAX for a red-eye, we watched the sun set in Santa Monica.

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA

On our last day in LA, we headed out to Pasadena so I could show Brian the Norton Simon Museum. We had also heard that the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens was lovely, and it was open earlier, so we headed there first.

This place is absolutely gorgeous! Henry and Arabella Huntington amassed an enormous collection of rare books, art, and plants from all over the world, and it was an incredibly pleasant and peaceful place to wander around. In the library, we saw a Gutenberg Bible (among many other fascinating things). In the art collection, we saw the usual array of lovely paintings and interesting sculptures, and the gardens truly knocked our socks off. The rose garden was spectacular, and the Japanese garden, with the lily pads, the bridge and the colorful fish swimming in the pond was really breath-taking!

After a long day, we had an incredible dinner at Frida’s in Westwood Village, then waited in line for way too long for ice cream sandwiches at Diddy Reise … but they were so good!

After the Getty Center, we headed down to see the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We mixed up the timing, so we only had an hour, but that gave us enough time to breeze through a lovely exhibit on Calder, a Japanese collection of Chinese paintings, and an exhibit of weird modern art, plus one whole floor of the permanent collection … a bit rushed, but a really great hour!!

After wandering around LA in the morning, we headed up to the Getty Center. This was the first of the five museums that we visited in our three days in Los Angeles. As with almost of the museums in the area, it’s an amazing place to enjoy the outside spaces, then head inside to check out some galleries, then pop back outside to admire the view, then head back inside for more art, and so on. We had both been to the Getty before, but never together. The Getty has a handful of my favorites, and it’s like visiting old friends! We could have stayed all afternoon, but we were also eager to head to LACMA.

We started our first full day in Los Angeles by heading over to Burbank to see the area where Brian used to live, then we drove around a bit to see the sites. Up Mulholland Drive for an amazing view of the city, down to Hollywood for the walk of fame (where we saw Darth Vader in front of the Chinese Theatre), we popped in to the ArcLight Cinema because we had heard of it, and because they have a nice bathroom, and we wandered through Amoeba Music (this was all Tuesday morning).

Several months ago, when we booked our trip to San Jose for Sean and Clif’s wedding, we decided to make a whole week out of it by adding on  a few days in Los Angeles. Brian hadn’t been to LA since he lived there for a few months 10 years ago, and it would give us a chance to visit my brother and his girlfriend, and to see the house they bought last summer.

Those two crazy kids got married in private in April, so it turned out that this was also our first time seeing my brother and his wife since they got married! When we arrived in LA, we headed straight to their house. We got a tour of their beautiful new home, and caught up over take-out. I realize now that I forgot to take a picture of them (they probably don’t mind) … I was too busy taking pictures of my niece and nephew: their cats, Ivy and Mosby.

On our long drive from San Jose to Los Angeles, we stopped in Pismo Beach around 1 or 2pm for a late lunch. We picked out Ventana Grill since it’s right on the water, and we enjoyed a delicious meal with an incredible view! Then, we drove down a bit to get a little closer to the public beach. The sand was incredibly soft, and we got our feet wet in the Pacific Ocean!

Back on the road … we arrived at Adam and Celeste’s house in Los Angeles by dinner time.

We spent all day Monday driving down to Los Angeles from San Jose. We took the scenic route to check out Monterey and Pismo Beach along the coast, and to drive along the Pacific Coast Highway … something we have both been wanting to do.

It really is a beautiful country.

Our in time in San Jose and the San Francisco Bay Area was over, and we spent all day Monday driving down to Los Angeles. We took the scenic route to check out some beautiful towns along the coast, and to drive along the Pacific Coast Highway. It really is a beautiful country.

We stopped in Monterey around 9:30am … only an hour in to our trip, but very worth it! Fisherman’s Wharf is a fun place to walk around, and it was awesome to see a big family of sea lions. We could hear their ‘arf! arf!’ from quite a ways away.

We left San Francisco, crossed the bay and headed over to Berkeley for dinner with our cousins. They treated us to an amazing backyard barbeque in their gorgeous backyard garden. They got married less than two months after we did, so the conversation naturally turned to how awesome our respective weddings were.

Same as that afternoon, our time together was over all too soon, but it was much better to spend three hours with them than none at all.

After saying our goodbyes to the grooms in Campbell, we headed up to San Francisco. There’s never enough time to explore such a great city … last year when we were in town for Lou and Jonathan’s wedding, we got to drive through San Francisco for less than an hour, mostly at night. This time, we had about four hours. I’ve been out to San Francisco five or six times before to visit my dear Lou, and spending four hours with her was definitely better than none at all.

We met up with Lou and Jonathan in her old neighborhood, where I stayed with her in 2006 and 2007, and we walked a very familiar route a few blocks down to the ocean at the Cliff House and Sutro Baths. It feels like the end of the earth there since it’s essentially the northwest corner of San Francisco, and there’s an incredibly wide vista (see video below) … nothing but ocean until you reach Japan. I used to take walks down there every day, so it was great to be back!

Then, we headed over to the Legion of Honor (a museum and park) for amazing views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the South Bay and the Marin Headlands. We drove around a bit so we could see some more of San Francisco, and then after a stop for coffee and ice cream, our time together was over all too soon.

After the wedding on Saturday, we wandered around the downtown Campbell area, which we got to know a bit when we were out here last summer. It’s a fun area, and the water tower looked cool in the setting sun, but it was way too crowded for dinner! On Sunday morning, we headed back to the same neighborhood to meet up with the grooms and enjoy Campbell’s Farmers’ Market for a quick hour before heading north to San Francisco.

Saturday morning, we headed to Hellyer County Park for another dance rehearsal before the wedding, and helped out with some of the set up. We left and came back to the park a few hours later and enjoyed an amazing afternoon for Sean and Clif’s wedding. They did an incredible job of bringing their own style to their day, so of course everything was fun and games. They hand-made awesome games for their guests, so we hung out with their friends and family over jumbo jenga, scrabble, tic tac toe, horse racing, skee-ball, you name it. Wonderful to see my old friend so happy 🙂

Friday night, we headed to Jen’s house in San Jose for a lovely Shabbat dinner with her and her kids, who love playing with Brian 🙂

After wandering around downtown San Jose, Brian dropped me off in Campbell (near San Jose) for a lunch-time dance rehearsal for the super-secret flash mob that Sean and Clif had planned for their wedding. We switched hotels to the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara (long story), and spent some time in the afternoon enjoying the lovely patio, and the gorgeous California weather.