Home Again with Stories to Tell

Miss me? We’re back! What a great few days!

We drove to LA on Monday morning and headed straight to the Huntington Library near Pasadena. The Huntington’s – he being part of the Big 4 Railroad monopoly – moved to LA in 1902 and began collecting books, papers and plants from all over the world. The Mansion was built in 1911 and the collections found a home.

We arrive just as it opened at noon and walked through the vast gardens to the new Chinese garden. The tea garden, water features and structures were so worth the trip and we wandered through them totally alone. We continued strolling through the Japanese gardens, the Zen garden and the Bonsai garden. Walking down a trail to the larger gardens, we paused under a canopy of a huge grove of bamboo of various varieties.

We chose the long path through the large garden past all the exotic plants including huge succulent gardens. One large tree had horns; yes horns, sticking out of every branch and on every inch of the trunk. The part of this visit that made me the happiest is that I was able, with the help of oxygen, to walk the gardens, up a number of stairs and a huge uphill back to the library. I was not out of breath. Yes, we took it slowly but I did it.

We went into the library to see the permanent display including a Guttenberg bible, the last photo of Lincoln, historical papers and books. We then entered the current exhibit call “A Clash of the Empires” The Seven Years War and British America featuring a very young George Washington. It was a lot to take in and wished that we had spent more time in the library in general.

Sadly, we realized that this was probably my final visit to one of our favorite places. It is not set up well for disabled people. The parking itself required a huge amount of walking, the disabled trails are not well marked and some trails will be impossible for me in the near future. I tried to drink in every moment of it and sear it into my brain.

We drove a few miles from the Huntington to the Norton Simon Museum right on the famous Rose Parade location of Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena. It is one of our most favorite museums. It felt like home as we strolled past all the Rodin bronzes on our way to the front door. The museum is divided by centuries from the 14^th – the 20^th. We re-visited wonderful works by Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Gauguin, Manet, Rembrandt, Picasso, Degas paintings as well as bronzes of girl ballerinas, Van Gough’s active paintings, Rousseau, and very old altarpieces dating from the 1300’s. We wandered and greeted each remembered piece like an old friend.

As we finished, Michael said, “Let’s go eat lunch!” And so we did. We headed to Philippe's, which is one of the oldest restaurants in LA. It was opened in 1908 and some fool in 1918 dropped a roll into beef juice, slapped thin slices of beef between the wet roll halves and voila! The French Dip was born. We had to have one! It was not in a very nice neighborhood. In fact, the inside of the restaurant probably looked pretty close to what it looked like in the beginning years. Sawdust was on the floor. You just don’t see that in your fast food places. The ladies making the sandwiches were lovely and walked us through the process. The French dip sandwiches were small by today’s standards but really a perfect size. They were also only $5.95. Unbelievable!

We headed across town to our hotel, which was the former iconic circular Holiday Inn featured in so many movies as well as noted when OJ Simpson drove by it on his famous car chase. Bundy is just a few blocks away. It is now a sleek boutique hotel, which we have stayed in many times through the years. It is in a perfect location – across the freeway from UCLA, at the foot of the Getty Museum, several blocks from Wilshire and is actually on Sunset Blvd. It also has a great bar/restaurant on the top floor, which overlooks the 405-freeway rush hour traffic, which was fascinating to watch. For dinner, we had two appetizers and Michael had a cocktail to end our day. He was snoring by 6:30. I soon followed.