Cavorting in California: Getty Center

The last thing we did in Los Angeles before taking a flight back home was to visit the Getty Center. Earlier, we've visited the Getty Villa, but the Getty Museum has two locations. We opted to visit the other location as well, in Brentwood. It's rather far away from where we were in San Pedro, but we had a car and so it wasn't too complicated to get there.

Cavorting in California: Museum of Latin American Art

Our visit to the Los Angeles area was wrapping up, but we still had a few remaining days to chill and explore. On one of these days, we went back to Long Beach to explore the neighbourhood a little bit more in detail, and one of the things we checked out was the Museum of Latin American Art. This museum is remarkable as it is the only museum in the USA that is dedicated and completely focused on art from Latin America.

Cavorting in California: Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

After visiting the Music Centre, we walked for a few blocks, and stumbled upon a very deconstructivist and modern church. I didn't realise this building was the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and apparently it was worth checking out. So we did.

Cavorting in California: Los Angeles Music Center

The Walt Disney Concert Hall it turns out is not a standalone venue. It is apparently part of a larger complex of venues, the Los Angeles Music Center. So when we joined the tour of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, we also learned a lot about the other venues comprising this complex.

Cavorting in California: Walt Disney Concert Hall

A few days before we left, we decided to spend an entire day in downtown Los Angeles. After all, there are a few interesting things to check out and see downtown, and we still haven't done that. So on that day, we decided to take the car and park it in the underground garage of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which was our first destination.

Cavorting in California: Palos Verdes Peninsula

My sister lives in San Pedro, which is south of central Los Angeles. It is also very close to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, which features a spectacular coastal road that is worth driving by. So one afternoon, that is what we exactly did. We took the car, and started exploring the area.

Cavorting in California: Getty Villa

We still had one full week ahead of us after visiting San Diego. While we didn't spend every day sight-seeing, we did check out a few highlights of the Los Angeles area. One of these is the Getty Villa. It is located in Pacific Palisades, which is quite a bit of a drive from where we were in San Pedro, but otherwise it was a very interesting place to visit.

Cavorting in California: San Diego Museum of Art

The final thing we checked out before leaving San Diego and driving back to Los Angeles was the San Diego Museum of Art. We wanted to explore at least one museum in Balboa Park, so we decided to be culture snobs and visit this one. It turned out to be a very interesting experience!

Cavorting in California: Japanese Friendship Garden

It was our last day in San Diego, but we still haven't checked out a major sight of the city, which was Balboa Park. So that was our plan for the day: check out of the hotel, then drive to Balboa Park and spend the day before driving back to Los Angeles. That was easily done, and after parking our car, we considered what to do, which somehow resulted in us deciding to visit the Japanese Friendship Garden.

Cavorting in California: University of California San Diego

After spending the morning in Point Loma, we then had some lunch and later on drove north, heading towards UC San Diego. We are in America after all, so visiting a sprawling American university campus should be in the itinerary.

Cavorting in California: Cabrillo National Monument

On our third day in San Diego, we decided to take the car and drive all the way to the southern tip of Point Loma Peninsula. There's actually a military installation nearby, and so there was some visible security, but we just drove past those installations and reached the very end of the peninsula, where the Cabrillo National Monument is located.

Cavorting in California: Hotel del Coronado

After spending the morning in the USS Midway Museum, we drove south to Coronado to check out a landmark, the Hotel del Coronado. This is a historic beachfront hotel, just across San Diego Bay. It is an architectural landmark, as it is one of the few surviving examples of the wooden Victorian beach resort. I am also told that it is the largest wooden structure in the USA.

Cavorting in California: USS Midway Museum

I am not a big fan of military installations, but I do find myself interested in visiting military museums. Especially when it's a former aircraft carrier. So the first thing we did on our first morning in San Diego was go to the waterfront area and check out the USS Midway Museum.

Cavorting in California: Mission San Juan Capistrano

On our first week in southern California, we had a plan to spend three nights in San Diego. We borrowed my sister's car for this period, and slowly drove south from Los Angeles. We decided to stop along the way in Mission San Juan Capistrano, which is about halfway from Los Angeles and San Diego. This is a very old structure, founded in 1776 by Spanish Catholic missionaries.

Cavorting in California: Aquarium of the Pacific

We flew from Berlin to Los Angeles on a Saturday. Due to the length of the flight, we decided to just take things slow that weekend. And only the next Monday did we start to venture out of my sister's house. We took the car and drove nearby to Long Beach, which is a short ride away from San Pedro, where we were staying. We decided to check out the Aquarium of the Pacific, right by the waterfront.

Cavorting in California

It's been a while since I last was in the United States. That was in 2018, and so given the fact that I have family there, it was high time we paid a visit. This finally happened earlier this year, in April. We flew to Los Angeles, where my sister lives, and stayed there for two weeks.

A Stranger in America

I have recently visited the United States after not having been there in a while. And I have to say, that even though I have spent a total of eleven years living in the United States in the past, I still find several aspects of the American lifestyle enigmatic, and hard to understand.

A Visit to Trumpistan: Green-Wood Cemetery

After spending 5 nights in the Washington DC area, it was time to head to New York City. We were also spending 5 nights there, but this time, there were more events surrounding friends than sight-seeing. In fact, I only took out my camera once, when we were checking out Green-Wood Cemetery. The rest of the time, I was either having coffee or eating meals with friends. Plus I also had a day when I felt sick due to a cold, so I just stayed in the hotel.

A Visit to Trumpistan: Old Town Alexandria

I wanted to go to Alexandria. It's a cute little town near Washington DC, and easily reachable by the metro. So we trekked all the way from northern Virginia, and after a while, we ended up in downtown Alexandria.

A Visit to Trumpistan: National Museum of the American Indian

I've been wanting to visit this museum, but somehow, during my last visit to Washington DC a decade ago, I didn't make it. So this time, I opted to make a point of visiting it. The museum has quite an extensive coverage, and it takes a very wide view of defining its scope: basically, it's a museum about all the native peoples in the Americas, not just in what is now known as the United States of America.