I managed to sleep until before 6, and after we spent some time together, we got focused on travel. LA traffic was a time-killer on today’s trip, eating up over an hour in the morning and two hours back. As my friend Scott W reminded me, traffic is a thing in LA. Today is the pre-match traffic as the World Cup starts with the opening game in Mexico. Everywhere there are warnings not to use the roads tomorrow, as the USA is playing here on Friday. We have whale watching and a short trip to the Queen Mary for Jazz and drinks on Friday Night instead of traveling. Breakfast will be out at Creme De La Crepe, about a 15-minute walk away.
Jeanne, Deborah, and I boarded Air VW the Gray, aka Evie, and soon I was driving messy, traffic-filled roads. Nav was out of its mind and had to get off and back on the same highway, somehow calculating this was a good idea. I remember seeing a similar problem for Zeriada in Texas a few years ago. When the roads are close together, the Mav cannot determine your location or the road’s position. Hmmm. I switched to Apple Maps, and the issue was gone.
Now that the driving was stable, we spent about thirty minutes in slow-moving traffic. We were suddenly on the Pacific Highway (Route 1) as the traffic broke up, and we hit roads with traffic lights. The route had the beaches on one side and a park with high bluffs (palisades) on the other. We were in Palisades, California!
We turned into the Getty Villa and were on concrete laid in large cobblestone patterns, then parked the EV in a modern parking garage. and found our way through security and up and down elevators to reach the cafe, where Deborah and I got some coffee. The view was astonishingly beautiful, with modern and Roman Villa-style Pompeii home architecture intermixed. All pointed at the sea filled with trees that withstand the summer’s heat in Southern California and various, mostly sustainable, plantings.
We spent the cool left in the morning in the gardens and marveling over the recreation of a Roman Villa populated with copies of Roman bronzes and marbles (with a note that since the orginal roman ones were copies of Greek originals, that having modern copies was not really a change — they were and are all copies). I hopped back to the car, got Deborah a protein bar and water (it was getting hot), and joined a tour group for the ongoing Book of the Dead show. Our docent explained that some of the collection was borrowed from the British Museum, and then walked us in to see some of the loaned items. They are, he explained, from the 26th dynasty (the last of native control) and pointed out the various gods and the cultural framework of honesty and order. You did what the Pharaoh said.
The docent took the group upstairs, and I was surprised to find another whole museum of sculpture up there (the good stuff was on the first floor) and a section on the Book of the Dead, which is part, he shared, of the Getty collection. Here were parts of the book from the times of Ramses and King Tut, the two kingdoms of Israel, and the Ptolemaic Egypt. There was also the wrapping of a mummy in Ptolemaic Egypt, with spells and drawings illustrating its religious significance. Fascinating; I had read about it, but had not seen it before.
Next, he moved us to another part of the Gerry collection, a Roman-style mummy. The docent took off his hat, as did we, as he pointed out that these were human remains and should be treated with respect. These burial items included a lifelike painting of the embalmed person’s head as they were in life.
We returned upstairs and went to the cafe for lunch. It was not cheap, but the food was good. It was heating up. We visited many rooms with pottery, fresco remains, and floors. Sculpture was everywhere. It was relaxing in the pleasant environment. Lastly, we went to the bookstore, where I got some trinkets and a book with an image of another version of the Book of the Dead, with word-for-word translation.
We then left and stopped at a beach just a moment away. There was a sign that warned about bacteria in the water, so we just looked. I thought I spotted a whale or maybe a seal out in the sea. I also saw a large dark figure in the water that did not look like a whale. No reason to swim too deeply here!
After that, I took Evie in heavy traffic for a long ride. We finally arrived in Long Beach.
We decided on the Mexican place across the street, as Beborah has a 15% discount there. We enjoyed some drinks and food, and soon headed back. We had planned to watch a movie together, but the hotel’s Internet is out.
There is a planned power outage while they test the hotel’s safety systems. I selected to write the blog tonight.
Thanks for reading!
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