I love living in LA and having so many cultural options all the time. If I could afford it, I’d go to the Getty every week. Yes, I know that admission is free, but parking was raised to $10 and that adds up. This was my 3rd trip in 10 months … but Andrew and I are going to try to go more often … I already went to their website and wrote down the dates of future exhibits/etc to look forward to.

Last Sunday, we took my friend Angela and her fiancee Devo (whose wedding I will be shooting in Italy!) … they had never been to the Getty and I think they really enjoyed it. …

But first, we went to lunch at Andrew’s favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant – Mi Casa.

Then to the Getty around 1p … we only had a few hours there before the museum closed …

Ang and Devo took a look around while Andrew and I went to the lecture I was so excited about.

Carleton Watkins and the Element of Time
By Weston Naef

As far as I remember, Mr. Naef (on the left in the image below) is the curator of the photography dept of the Getty. Until later this week when he is retiring. Sunday was his last lecture for the Getty. That may be why the auditorium was soo so full. Probably a lot of donors there. They were all older than me and Andrew for sure …

Anyway – the lecture:
Between getting there, lecture-proper and q&a session it was about 2 hours. 2 hours of academia which I SO miss. 2 hours of someone talking to me about the thought, themes, intent, composition, etc of landscape images (which I admittedly didn’t really ‘get’ until now). May sound boring to all of you but I LOVED it. I immediately went home to check out dates for future Getty lectures (free!)…

I learned a lot .. .got a ton of ideas … took notes. It was a really great experience … I can’t stress enough how valuable that $10 we spent on parking was.

After we left, we went to one of my favorite places … Menchie’s!

Great Sunday …

The other day, we went to Malibu, again.

Early in the morning, again.

But this time we got there early enough for breakfast. Which you want to do early on a Sunday morning, believe me.

The last time we went to Malibu early in the morning, we discovered Point Dume. This time, just before Point Dume, we discovered the Hideaway Cafe. It is connected to the Malibu Country Inn. … seems like a cute, quaint little place to stay.

Since (we were smart) and got there around 9am, we were lucky enough to have no waiting AND an ocean view!

Taken from my seat. That is my coffee cup in the foreground, with the ocean seen through the fence.

This guy visited us while we were eating … and then hopped along the fence to the people sitting next to us — where he got a grape the size of his head.

my yummy breakfast. … I LOVE breakfast. Love it. … but that’s a post for another day…

From where I took this image, the hotel is behind me and to the left. The garden borders several hotel rooms and leads to the Cafe. Our table was on the far side of the building, on the ocean-side.

Then we drove up PCH a bit to just past the turn off for Leo Carrillo beach. Parked on PCH, and followed this path …

… to a cliff above the beach.

Andrew and I climbed down the cliff — very awkwardly since I was in a skirt and flip flops. Only to discover there was a staircase about 20 feet away.

And a final image … self-portrait with the ocean.

We only ended up staying a few hours. I had family in town and needed to be social.

But that’s the beauty of living in Southern California – you can go to the beach for just a couple hours.

It’s fantastic.

P.S. My husband went to the beach for 45 minutes this morning on his way to work. Crazy boy.