After spending a mellow morning at my brother’s condo, we headed across Los Angeles towards the Pacific Ocean. LA’s freeway’s are crazy and infamous for its bad traffic congestion, but at around 1pm it wasn’t that bad. We made it to Malibu in about 30 minutes.

We had a huge lunch at Fiesta Feast. Fantastic Mexican food! Strangely the owner apparently met Ronald Reagan somewhere, and there’s an autographed picture of him with Ronald Reagan.

Anyway, after an excellent lunch, we finally made it to our destination, The Getty Villa.
The Villa is a museum dedicated to ancient Greek and Roman civillizations. It’s more than just a museum in the strictest sense. There is an amphitheatre where ancient Greek and Roman plays are performed. Infact the entire museum area is designed to look like an actual Roman noble’s country house that stood on the foothills near Mt. Vesuvius. Through excavations in the 1700 and 1800s, a detailed map was eventually made of the villa’s landscape. So when Mr. Getty himself commissioned the project they had an excellent source of architectural reference. Now that I’ve visited both the Getty Museums of LA, I think I prefer the Villa!

Afterwards, we decided to kill time at the 3rd Street Promenade in nearby Santa Monica. We’ve been here before, so we’re somewhat familiar with the area now. Still, it’s fun just to walk around the place and watch the tourists, the locals and the street performers!

That evening we returned to my brother’s place briefly before the 3 of us headed out to Palermo’s Italian Restaurant. Excellent place, I highly recommend it. We capped off the evening at The Standard, a swanky jet-set hotel with a glamorous Hollywood bar. We tried to get these stupid arm-bands that apparently allowed you to go up the escalator then on to the top floor to get one of the best views of LA. The admission policy had changed since the last time my brother had been there, and now only hotel guests were being allowed in. Dumb. So we sat and people-watched over cocktails.

Stay tuned for more…