Blake and Marla Visit Los Angeles Day 2

Thursday March 1 2012

Los Angeles

I was up pretty early so I went for a walk over to LAX and checked out where we check in. The line ups were amazing long and that was at 6:30 in the morning. Our plane is at 6am so we have to be there even earlier tomorrow. It was a really nice walk and it looks like it is going to be a nice day. I went back to the hotel and got Marla up for about 9:30am. There was a promo channel on the station and one of the museums it featured was the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. It looked really cool but then I saw the one on the J. P. Getty. I figured that would be the best place to go so we headed out. The GPS got us there, it was further than I thought, but with only one missed exit we found the parking lot. It cost $15 to park but on the plus side it costs nothing to get into the art gallery.

And what a wonderful gallery it is. Examples of European art form Illuminated Manuscripts in the twelfth century to great Masters of the Renaissance to Impressionists of the 19^th Century. It was wonderful. We got tuckered out somewhere between the Dutch Masters and the Louis XIV furniture so we went to have lunch in the Restaurant. We had a Flat Iron steak to split between us. My it was delicious. Because we share so many meals we can eat much better. I don't mind spending $23 a plate when it is shared between us too and still have left overs.

We continued by going through the furniture and decorations of the French regimes and wrapped things up with the English Landscape artists and French Impressionists. Our next gallery visit we are going to skip everything prior to the 1800's and just go for the art after 1850. We wrapped up about four. It would have been nice to have a coffee but coffee at the gallery is really expensive and we were leaving anyways so we opted to go a nearby McDonalds. The GPS lead us to one three miles a way in Santa Monica. It was okay and I had a Happy Meal of chicken nuggets. It was only 190 calories so it fit into my meal plan for the day. And Marla got the prize.

The downside was that we were going to go to the Griffith Observatory to see the sunset. Unfortunately it took about an hour and 15 minutes to drive a mile back to I405. So we changed our route and went up to CityWalk at Universal Studios in Burbank. We strolled through CityWalk watching some things like the iFly store, then a very cool candy store called Sugar and finally up to the Universal Store and the big Universal logo statue. We were hungry after having some really good popcorn and so we decided to eat at Tony Romas. We split a Ribs and Steak Medallions plate which was more than enough.

We got lost on the way home and found ourselves driving by Forest Lawn Cemetery and the Warner Brothers Studio. We even drove by the road to the Griffith observatory which is where we wanted to go a few hours earlier. One of the highlights of the day was when we were at the Art Gallery a trio of college girls complimented Marla on her purple hair and purple leather coat. Later when we were at CityWalk the same girls recognized us and complimented Marla again. It was fun that we were both there.

We made it home to the hotel and relaxed for a bit. The next day we had to get up quite early – 3am to ensure we would catch our 6am flight. Oh my God that's early.

Click here to see pictures from our days in Los Angeles http://www.flickr.com/photos/56705607@N00/sets/72157629185762834/