Day 19

So Wednesday was our first day on our own again. I spent most of the morning looking into some career related stuff, sending some emails to people, setting up meetings, etc. Not the most exciting stuff to read really. Anyway, our trip for the day was to the J. Paul Getty Museum off the 405. We had been to the museum on our previous LA trip in 2004, but that was a long time ago, so we figured we may as well go again. Also, aside from parking, the museum is free to go to, nice change haha.

We drove down the 101 to the 405, fortunately there was not too much traffic, so we were able to get there in about a half hour or so. Eventually we got off the highway and headed towards the Getty Center. We drove in, and then down a few levels to park. We then had to take an elevator up, and catch a tram up the rather large hill on which the museum sits. Nice little ride up, some pretty awesome views from up there.

Since it was about 1 o'clock or so when we got there (and I hadn't really eaten anything all day) our first stop was to the cafe, where I grabbed a few things to eat. Afterwards, we headed out to the back of the center, to the gardens, which were pretty cool and unique looking. After walking around them for a little bit in the 100+ degree weather, we decided to head inside to the air conditioned museum and look around.

The majority of the museum is made up of paintings and sculptures. It's primarily broken up into four pavilions, one for each of the cardinal directions. We started in the West Pavilion, which was pretty much all paintings and sculptures, then headed to the South, which was also paintings and sculptures. There was an observation deck/patio thing behind the South and West pavilions, which provided some incredible views of the city and the surrounding area.

We explored the museum for a few hours, took plenty of pictures, though I'm not going to post them here because I worry about copyright stuff, you never know... We stayed until about 5:30, by which I was exhausted, and the foot was starting to hurt a bit. We rode the tram back down the hill, and I braced myself for what I assumed would be horrendous traffic on the way back to Burbank, as it was probably around rush hour.

Shockingly, that wasn't the case, and we managed to get back relatively quickly, only took a few minutes longer than getting there. We spent most of the evening hanging out in the room, I took a quick trip over to Ralph's to get a few things, and then I headed over to Van Nuys to play poker with my friends and their friends. I'm by no means a poker expert, probably not even a novice, so I didn't last too long, but it was fun to play and at least learn about the game a little more. But most importantly it was nice to see my friends and get to know some of the guys I've met out here a little better.