Mad Maps

I just found a new source for day trip, scenic routes and off-the-beaten-path tours of Southern California, Mad Maps.

My trusty Real Simple listed it as a problem-solver under $6 in its August issue. These pocket-sized maps show seven scenic drives, out-of-the-way eateries, and other great places to stop and see the best that the area has to offer.

There are maps offered Los Angeles and San Diego. I'll have to check them out.

Getty Villa

NOTE: I just went back to the Villa today and took the Orientation tour. There is no need to take both the Architecture and Garden tour and the Orientation tour. They overlap a lot. Instead I recommend getting in line early for the spotlight tour lead by the gallery teachers, not the docents. We showed up at 2:45 for the 3 p.m. tour and it was full. So sad.

June 24, 2007 - On Saturday Ty and I went north to Pacific
Palisades to visit J. Paul Getty's renovated Villa.

It is modeled after the ancient Villa dei Papiri, believed to have been the home of Julius Caesar's father-in-law, buried by the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius. Now the Getty Villa is dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome and Etruria.

The grounds are designed to resemble an archeological site. On the top level there are modern buildings and a cafe with outdoor tables. We travel down into the site the architects built layers of sedementary rock into the canyon walls to represent time as we descend upon the Roman home beautifully restored and alive to tell its story.

The Villa is dedicated to showing life as the romans lived. Built around a large courtyard with small galleries that would have been rooms for the family. The walkways are lined with busts of individuals known by the family, serving as conversation pieces for their guests as they toured the home.

The gardens are spectacular. They have gone to painstaking detail to plant only those flowers and herbs that would have been in existance in Roman times.

We watched a 12 min overview of the building and renovation of the Villa and also took the 40 minute Garden and Architecture Tour. I highly recommend it as a great introduction to the museum and its vision. There are also other tours available that go into greater depth about the collections.

One thing I loved was that every tour is given a receiver and headphones. You can wander up to 100 feet away from your group and still hear what the docent is saying. It gives greater opportunity to explore and not have to travel through the musueum in a clump straining to hear. Great feature.

The museum has 44,000k pieces of antiquity and 1,200 are on display, so no two visits to the Villa will be the same. Log onto getty.edu to request your free tickets. I would plan a few weeks in advance as tickets go quickly. But the great thing about a limited number of tickets per day is that the museum never feels too crowded. We arrived at 11 a.m. and wandered around, took a tour, leisurely strolled through exhibits and ate in the cafe and left around 4 p.m. We didn't feel rushed. It was actually a very relaxing experience.

Parking is $8.

Pavilion of Wings

DSC00073
Originally uploaded by greenbeangirl74

This past weekend Erika and I ventured to Natural History Museum in Los Angeles to see the Pavilion of Wings. With her KCRW discount we got in for free, how sweet is that.

The Pavilion itself was amazing! Full of brightly colored bushes and flowers to attract and feed the butterflies there are literally hundreds and hundreds of butterflies flying all around. I felt like a kid again in complete wonder and awe. Most of the time you just stand there in stunned silence as you watch these beautiful creatures flutter around so delicately.

The exhibits shows the life cycle of the butterfly from caterpillar through its metamorphisis. Every week new species are released. The museum lets people in on the half hour but since we went on a weekend it was still really crowded.

The Pavilion is open through November 3rd. There is an extra $3 fee for the Pavilion of Wings in addition to the museum entrance fee of $9.
900 Exposition Blvd. (between Vermont and Figueroa.)
Los Angeles, CA 90007 Phone: (213) 763-DINO

List of Places I Have yet to see Southern California

I've been to many places over the last 14 years that I've lived here in Southern California, but new things keep popping up on my radar. Here is a list of places I want to visit, categorized by their general vicinity. Of course I have the least for where I live (OC).

1. Palm Springs - Aerial Tram, Windmill Tour, Pioneer Town, Indian Canyon Tour

2. San Diego - Balboa Park Botanical Gardens, Point Loma, U.S.S. Midway, Heritage Park Victorian Village, Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, Eat in the Gaslamp District, Old Town. Other tour options: All San Diego Tours, Old Town Trolley, Gaslamp Architectural Tour

3. Los Angeles - Cheesy star tour, Forest Lawn (architecture and celebrity cemetery), Venice Beach (driven by it, never stopped on the boardwalk), Museum of Tolerance, Buenaventura Mission, San Gabriel Mission Other tour options: LA Conservancy Walking Tours of Downtown, Sony Pictures Studio Tour (even though WB is the best),

4. Santa Barbara - Santa Barbara Mission, Santa Ynez Mission, Stearns Wharf, Galleria del Mar, Other Tour Options: Red Tile Tour, Santa Barbara Trolley Tours, Architectural Foundation Walking Tours

5. Orange County - Bowers Museum, Art Bar,

I hope to visit a lot of these this summer. We'll see.

Farecast.com

Want to know the best time to book your flight for the lowest fare? I just discovered a web site that will help you do just that.

Farecast.com will help you determine the best time to buy your flight in the next 90 days. It will advise you to buy now cause fares are on the rise or wait because fares are dropping. You can set up an alert that will keep you posted on how your fare is doing.

Based on a third party audit they are 74.5% accurate in their predictions and offer fare history report as a comparison.

Only larger metropolian areas have the farecast option available. I was only able to set up my alerts from Los Angeles or Ontario but not Orange County.

Shakespeare By the Sea

Since I've already concluded that Shakespeare is more easily understood and appreciated in an outdoor venue, this weekend we're planning to see Taming of the Shrew in Irvine's Turtle Rock park this Sunday.

It's a great experience with the Bard in an outdoor amphiteatre and the travelling company, Shakespeare by the Sea never disappoints.

Visit their web site to see if they're visiting an LA area park near you.

Live Music at the Irvine Spectrum.

I said I loved the Irvine Spectrum and I wasn't kidding. We were back again tonight.

We went to see Evening, had dinner at Champs and then headed toward Barnes and Noble. We never made it to Barnes and Noble, we were sidetracked by Cold Stone Creamery and two twin violinists.

The Irvine Spectrum has several stages located through the complex dedicated to live performance. We were treated to Jason and Nolan, the electric violin playing identical twins. They were amazing. It was a great finish to our evening. So relaxing to sit and listen to their music ranging from celtic, to romantic and a hymn thrown in for good measure.

I went to the Spectrum web site but they do not have their live event page updated to include anything. If you'd like to see Jason and Noan they will be back July 28 and 29.

Night at Irvine Spectrum

One of my favorite outdoor shopping spots in all of Southern California is the Irvine Spectrum. Debbie and I went to see Ocean's 13 and have dinner at PF Changs.

With the recent additions of Target, Nordstrom, Old Navy and more parking it's a great place to people watch, go to the movies, shop and eat. It is also a teenage hangout so you trip over the teens and tweens at every turn, but its still worth the effort to visit.

When my nephews were here in December we went to ride the ferris wheel, take a turn on the carrousel and skate on the ice rink they bring in for the holidays.

Other favorite restaurants there are: Johnny Rockets, Cheesecake Factory, California Pizza Kitchen, Javier's and Red Robin.

Mission Inn

Sunday, desiring an afternoon drive and something to do we headed out to Riverside to see the famed Mission Inn.

A glorious relic of Spanish architecture the Mission Inn was originally built to be a single family home in 1880, the simple adobe home was soon used to generate extra income for its owners, the Miller family. As money permitted additions were made to make room for more guests.

We signed up for a Mission Inn Museum tour ($12), which is a 75 minute walking tour of the hotel. Be advised you are not allowed to take photos. I was highly disappointed. But we were escorted through the extensive grounds and into many areas that were for guests only. After the tour we got permission from staff to go back through and take photos.

The Inn felt a bit like the Winchester Mystery House as we saw steps and doors that no longer led anywhere and outside walls that were now inside and allies that became an indoor hallway. It is an odd dichotomy of grandeur and areas that seem a bit out of date. The latest owners are working hard to remodel and update the hotel. I imagine its a bit like keeping up with a castle.

The Inn is beautiful and is a character in and of itself. It has presidential connections, art collections from around the world and beautiful Tiffany stained glass in the chapel.

Unless you're an avid architecture fan or photoholic I can't imagine you'd make the trek out to Riverside to see the Mission Inn, but if you're in the area I highly recommend it. It has a great story.

We did not eat there but the hotel boasts of 5 different restaurants. There is a Sunday brunch for $32.

Mission Inn: 3649 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside, CA 92501

Wicked Good

Last night Tina and I ventured to LA to see Wicked at the Pantages Theatre.

Tina heard from a co-worker that you can enter your name into a lottery to receive orchestra tickets for $25 (cash only). The deal is you have to be there two hours before your show to put your name in. Our show was at 8 p.m. and we got there at about 5:55 p.m. but still made it. Unfortunately we didn't get them. So sad. At least we still had tickets, albeit in the nosebleed.

But being there so early gave us time to head to Hollywood and Highland where we discovered a cute little desert store called Beard Papa. Specializing in cream puffs, the Japanese-based chain has some seriously delicious treats. I tried the eclair (cream puff topped in chocolate) and it was so packed-full of yummy custard filling that it was gushing out. I could hardly hold it. It's a great treat. Tina had a boba smoothie and she said it was delicious.

As we drove through various part of LA I was reacquainted with how ridiculous the movie promotions are up there. We actually saw a man dressed like Noah on the street corner with a poster board promoting the release of Evan Almighty. That's right, some poor schlep had to stand in 85 degree weather in full beard and burlap costume with what appears to be a hand-painted sign promoting the movie. I know there are freaks in LA but I'm sure this was some jr. VP's idea as a good way to remind people that the movie is opening. Odd.

But it was time to head back to the Pantages. I saw Wicked for the first time two years ago and must say that I liked it better the second time. Maybe it was because I knew the story and all the music. Or because unlike last time we got to see all of the leads including the amazing Carol Kane. Eden Espinoza (Elpheba) and Megan Hilty (Glinda) were simply fantastic. Their voices absolutely filled the theatre. However, the male leads in this particular production were a little underwhelming. Their voices simply could not match those of Hilty and Espinoza. The women definitely reign supreme in this cast!

It's also interesting to see the modifications they have made to the script and scenery now that it is in a longer run at the Pantages. A co-worker's daughter was in the traveling production and said that they also had to make changes because audiences weren't getting some of the material. I think they toned down some of the corrolations to the movie and had to make certain plot twists more obvious.

Still a great production and a great night.