Monday, July 18, 2011

ATL-LAX

Mary was in LA for a summer course that wrapped up on Thursday, so we made a weekend of it! Shannon flew out Friday morning, and we had a nice three-day weekend in the city with beautiful weather and gorgeous sights.

On Friday, we visited the Getty Center. It was amazing. If you do nothing else in LA, do this. The exhibits are wonderful, but you could spend all day just wandering around the lush grounds taking in the views from every side of the complex. We got there around lunchtime and shuffled out at 5:30 closing time on the final tram.

One of the Highlights of the day was seeing Irises by Van Gogh, right there in front of us, in all its glory. Pretty cool. We have the print hanging in our house! We enjoyed a late lunch on the terrace overlooking the garden with gorgeous views of the city all around. Pretty much a perfect day.

Friday night at 7 pm marked the start of the long-feared, much-hyped #carmageddon, which ended up being a non-issue, probably because the locals heeded the warnings and respectfully stayed at home! We on the other hand were out and about, with no traffic problems to speak of.

On Saturday, we hiked to the Hollywood sign in Griffith Park, taking what's probably the longest possible route ;) All we know is it was a lot longer than the short 6-mile hike... But we had a great time, and enjoyed gorgeous views of LA on one side of the ridge, and Burbank on the other. It was actually a really clear day, so when we made it up to the peak of Mt. Lee, we could see forever! After our hike, we met up with one of Shannon's friends from Auburn who lives in Manhattan Beach and had a great time catching up.


Sunday was our lazy beach day. We slept in and spent the rest of the day walking from Santa Monica to Venice Beach and the Venice canals, and then back to Santa Monica, about 6 miles round trip. Then on Monday we flew home and Liz was kind enough to meet us halfway to pick up Riley.

It was a great trip, and we loved the perfect weather and scenic views. You can see all the photos (complete with captions of course!) from our weekend here.

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