Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: Amtrak Adventure 2019
From Santa Monica to the Getty Museum
After
a Starbucks breakfast, we travelled on the LA Metro's Expo Line for
its full length to downtown Santa Monica. Thankfully, it was a
far nicer experience than our first venture onto
the network in April 2018! After leaving the light rail vehicle, we
walked down Colorado Avenue towards the beach, and from our elevated
position took the ramp down to Santa Monica Pier. Although I knew I
had been there on at least two occasions many years ago, I had
trouble recognising the location. Despite less than ideal conditions
of ocean mist and a cool breeze, crowds of people were out enjoying
the attraction. I had forgotten that the pier marked the western end
of the celebrated Route 66.
When we felt that we had seen enough of the pier, we took a brief walk along E Ocean Ave and up to the 3rd Street Promenade, perhaps one of the most successful examples of pedestrianisation that I have ever seen. We had a plain, but nevertheless enjoyable lunch at Voltaggio STRFSH, which specialised in freshly prepared fish sandwiches.
Repositioning
onto Wilshire Blvd for ease of being picked up, Bruce ordered a Lyft
to take us the five or six miles to the Getty Museum. This is
situated on a hilltop in Brentwood, adjacent to the Interstate 405
freeway, and its main speciality is European paintings. (There is
also a secondary site in Malibu for ancient art.) After being
dropped off at a kind of welcome centre, we decided to walk up to
the museum to avoid the huge line for the so-called 'trams' (which,
somewhat bizarrely, resembled San Francisco's BART trains).
This proved to be a superb - and absolutely vast - museum, enhanced by wonderful gardens, spectacular architecture and fabulous presentation. I was staggered to find that it was completely free for us, although drivers had to pay USD20 for parking.
When we were eventually done, we took a Lyft to West Hollywood for drinks and dinner. Considerably later, the third Lyft of the day took us back to base in DTLA.
