Getty Center, Hollywood, a Birthday Party and Family

Our weekend in Los Angeles started with a morning at the Getty Center.  Pro tip, get to the center right at 10AM, parking in the garage is easy and you don't have to wait in line for the tram to the museums. 

So the Getty Center is actually four different buildings each with it's own museum displays and a large garden.

Looking Southeast towards Los Angeles.  It's from here that I finally truly understood the geography of the LA area.

The 405 freeway heading north into "the valley"

Here at the Los Angeles part of the Getty collection, the art covers the pre-Renaissance through the modern day.  The Greek and Roman pieces are at the Malibu campus of the Getty.  Here we have......Bernini!!!

A famous Monet.....it was like the Getty's Mona Lisa...there was a huge crowd in front of it at all times!

On loan was this painting by Pontormo....who I had learned about in Yvonne's Art History class.  It was fun to be at the Getty and I was texting her photos and we were playing, guess the artist and art.

I thought I was all cool here saying...how can this be the forum is that's Vesuvius in the background?  But Yvonne posited that this was probably Pompeii's forum.  I was put in my place!

"CHAI" = "Tear Down" from buildings to be torn down all over China.

After lunch and an afternoon in Santa Monica, Onions and I ended up here in Hollywood!!!

And we had no idea Hollywood was so touristy and "cheesy"  After a quick stroll down the main strip we ended up here.....

The glamorous Roosevelt Hotel.  Why?

It was the Los Angeles site of the birthday of our friend....

HANS!!!  His wife Teresa organized a LA site of his birthday for their southern California friends here at the bowling alley inside a bar at the hotel!

Score is kept the old fashioned way....by a guy who wrote the scores by hand on the chalkboard.

Sunday we started with lunch in LA's downtown Chinatown and checked out the renovated Union Station nearby.

We then moved over to Pasadena for some ice cream at this cool "gas station" repurposed as ice cream stop!

Paying homage to Parks and Rec...Pasadena City Hall.

And a drive down to the Rose Bowl.  For Chen family history buffs...Marlene and I remember this as the location of the famous Mom Chen parking/storming out of the car incident of the early 1990's.

For Onions it was fascinating that his first reaction for this place was...."this is where China lost the Women's World Cup in 1999 (Brandi Chastain's sports bra moment)."  It's funny how think of a place with different reference points. 

We ended the weekend with a diner with Ming, Uncle Shao and cousin Evelyn and her family.