I’ve learned to never ever say never.
After four years of driving from the Bay Area to San Diego (six times a year, I might add), I vowed to never make that drive again.
Well, it wasn’t quite San Diego, but driving to La-la land is just as tortuous.
J, my cousin, was graduating from UCLA this past weekend. So my mom, bro and I had an excuse to leave town for a bit. (S stayed home to work. Which may have been a good thing, because #1: I wouldn’t have been able to shop as much as I did; #2: we wouldn’t have been able to get an “early” start on both days; and #3: he would have gone super ballistic with all the traffic we had to deal with.)
We started our drive at noon-ish Friday. We stopped at Harris Ranch for lunch. (Harris was always the place we’d stop for lunch or dinner during family trips down to SoCal.) I didn’t notice the cows this time around, so I didn’t feel guilty as I sank my chompers into a Ranch Burger.
We pulled into the Valley around 6.30p and into the 405 South parking lot. Sitting on the freeway, looking up to the Getty Museum, it was killing me that we were SO close to our turnoff, yet so far away. So, what normally should have taken us 15 minutes to get to our hotel, took us almost an hour! (Yah, traffic in LA sucks! Yes, I know it doesn’t help that it was a Friday evening.)
We stayed at a boutique hotel in LA – on the border (literally) of Beverly Hills and the Palms/Century City section of LA. We were kitty corner from The Kabbalah Center (no sights of Madonna, Demi, or Ashton).
The Kabbalah Learning Center of Beverly Hills
After an hour upon our arrival, I was out the door to meet Heidi for dinner. (Heidi was my roomie my freshman year at UCSD.) Since neither of us was familiar with LA – we headed for an area we both knew – Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica. We enjoyed catching up over a lovely and late Italian dinner. (I hadn’t seen her since our wedding! And didn’t even really get to talk to her then.)
I skipped breakfast Saturday morning, still full from the Ranch Burger and the Chicken Marsala I had for dinner. The 3 of us were out the door en route to the Getty Museum before 10a! And, of course, there was traffic on the 405 North, but we made it to the center a quarter after ten. We paid the parking fee, parked the car and were on a tram taking us up to the museum within 10 minutes. (There is a parking fee, but entrance to the museum is FREE!) Even without seeing the paintings, photographs and sculptures, the museum and gardens itself are quite impressive. So after viewing Art after 1800, the Central Garden, and the Rembrandt exhibit, we made the requisite stop at the bookstore. Unfortunately the print that I wanted was not available without a frame (and is no longer available on their website).
The entrance to the Getty Center
We dropped my brother off at the hotel, cultural places like that tire him out, and then my mom and I headed out to find Intuition. We should have kept driving, because Intuition was highly disappointing. Stick the to their web store is all I can say. I took her out to the Third Street Promenade and we stopped at Banana Republic petites, Zara (J’adore Zara!) and a massive sale at Anthropologie. We got back to the hotel around 5.30p and picked up my brother and traveled up to Hollywood Blvd (not worth getting out of the car), then to Beverly Center and then to Oishi Sushi for dinner. It was an early night since we had to be at UCLA at 8.30a Sunday morning.
J, me, and bro at UCLA Commencement
Commencement is always an exciting time! I always find it fun and exciting to visit a college campus and UCLA is definitely that. A lot bigger than UCSD, that’s for sure. Something ironic during the ceremony: it was the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology ceremony and yet all these helium filled balloons were “released” into the atmosphere. Think about it. After pictures and a stop at the bookstore (you know it’s LA because there was a Clinique counter and a Paul Franck section inside), we headed out to Marina Del Ray for lunch at C & O Cucina for the best darn garlic rolls and ginormous servings of pasta.
And yet again, we were on the road home…all in all it was a fun weekend and I was glad to get away for a little bit and lightly crisp (bronzer, to tan en français) at the same time. But it’s always nice to come home.