Blogs from Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, United States, North America

Well what a fantastic day. Heatwave for us poor NZ folk. Two bus rides and a tram ride later we were at the Getty Art Museum. We stood in front of Monet's, Van Gough's, Cezane's Rembrant's etc original paintings. We were able to get within a meter of them and even take photographs. The building itself was amazing. Huge scale, full of beautiful art and priceless objects. And it was all free!! We rode the 2 buses home and took another 1 hour bus trip to the Famous Venis Beach. As we got closer the atmosphere changed from a happy friendly clean place to an angry, loud, dirty cinister place. When we got off the bus we were instantly caught up in a large tight crowd of people aggressively talking loudly with much swearing and swaggering. ... read more

G'day We've done quite a lot since the last blog entry. On Tuesday, (yes I know we've told you about stuff since then) we visited a contact who was recommended to me in Melbourne. Brian Studwell is the USA representative for Henselite - lawn bowls manuafacturer. They are probably the top of the market worldwide, and make all their bowls in Melbourne. Just before he played in a social game. Geoff got and gave information about bowls in both countries. Yesterday (Thursday) we attended our second TV recording. Yes, we were at the actual recording of the Jimmy Kimmel's show followed by a very loud, short concert by ancient rocker Ziggy Pop. Yesterday we went, with Andy to a rehearsal of the Bill Maher show "Real Time With Bill Maher" Maher is an ireverant left ... read more

One fine day in L.A. I (Gerry) decided to visit the Getty Center in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. I reckoned it was only 4 or 5 miles away so I set off walking, not always an easy thing to do as most US routes are set up for cars not pedestrians. I didn't pass a single person and on long stretches there wasn't even a pavement, but I had the company of thousands of cars driving along the world's busiest road, the 405 Santa Monica Highway! The Getty Center is a museum and art gallery built over 750 acres by the J.Paul Getty Trust. The building itself is an architectural wonder (although I wasn't overly impressed with it). Most of it is made from a light-coloured stone called travertine, 16,000 tons of it! ... read more