Day 348-350: The Getty and the Gospel

It was a beautiful day that we visited the Getty Museum; sitting pretty high on the hills of Los Angeles it offers not only a stunning view of the sprawling city but far more exhibitions than one could possibly absorb in an afternoon's wanderings.

Much like the Guggenheim before it, the Getty Museum is one of those places where the building itself is one of the biggest artistic attractions. There are wide open spaces, frolicking fountains, great glass windows and sweeping sculpted gardens. And it's free to get in, once you've paid the $15 parking fee.

We wandered abound a small exhibition of Ankgor Gods, which made us realise how long ago it was that we visited Angkor Wat itself (for the record: 237 days) and a wonderful collection of impressionist paintings. On any visit to the Getty Museum, ample time must be allowed for coffee breaks in its numerous cafés.

That evening we had plans (so many plans, so many options...) so we couldn't stay to watch the sun set over LA but it is open late and I imagine it is quite the sight.

The following morning, in varying states of hungover and with a new edition to the British contingent, another friend from home, Claire, we were making our way to the holiest of events down in Hollywood. It was Sunday morning and we had tickets to a Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues.

It was a buffet brunch and any preconceived notions I might have had about the American large portion-sizes were confirmed here. The buffet stretched from one side of the room to the other, almost as far as the eye (in an admittedly pretty dark room) could see and encompassed everything from scrambled eggs, muffins, waffles (plus toppings), macaroni cheese, salads (plural), cold meats, prawns, deserts (again, very plural) to build-it-yourself omelettes and watermelon slices. A feast! The perfect hangover cure – and that was just the buffet bit.

The best part was definitely the gospel itself; a choir lead by a woman with a voice like Aretha Franklin and an outfit like a wedding cake being attacked by a swan belted out hymns that were as funky as they were soulful. They also sung perhaps the coolest possible rendition of happy birthday I've ever heard to lucky birthday attendees.

It was all over too quickly and with full stomachs and an extra (if painfully out of time) skip in our step Natalie's house-mate Blake took us on a bit of a sightseeing tour around the city, stopping of course, for the obligatory Hollywood sign snap (you can see it behind us if you get your face really close to the screen and squint)

Our time in LA was coming to an end, it had been a crazy whirlwind of a week – certainly nothing like we'd experienced before and, probably, like nothing we'll experience again. A massive thank you here to Natalie for making so much of it possible.

Day 344: Let's go Dodgers let's go!

The last leg of our trip, the home-stretch, the 3 weeks that we'll spend in America before returning home began – as all things should in LA – with a bang. One of my best friends in living here now and she came with a friend to pick us up from the airport and whisked us out to a small and incredibly busy cafe with one of the most vast array of pastries I've ever seen (but as it turned out, this is more a measure of the short time I'd spent in LA than the actually vastness of pastry goodness available)

Following our brunch, almost as quickly as we could take our bags out of the boot of one car we were sitting in another and were on our way to one of America's most iconic sporting stadiums. It was Sunday afternoon and we were weaving our way through 6-wide lanes of traffic, through wide palm-lined streets and past high-rise blocks to the Dodgers Stadium for one of the first games of the season.

The car park was huge – a sea of shining bonnets filled the grounds right up to the hills where “think blue” was written in the “hollywood” style and everyone around was certainly thinking blue, and wearing blue, and waving blue, and buying blue under the clear blue skies. Our first task was to find tickets and, once we'd found the vendors, decipher the seating code; was outfield better than reserve? Where was the pavilion? And what did loge mean? In amongst all of this a very friendly man gave us a set of tickets that he wasn't using that would allow us, once inside, to upgrade seat right behind the batter. Awesome.

On entry, everyone was handed a dodgers blanket that turned out to be a slanket (they call them snuggies here – a blanket with sleeves) which was of no use in the glorious sunshine of the first innings but absolutely vital in the closing stages of the game. Everyone around us was chanting and cheering and balancing huge trays of natchos/chips/”dodger dogs” (foot-long hot dogs) and in between innings music blared and the big screen scanned the audience for “smile cam” “dance cam” and “kiss cam” - it was basically, just like the movies.

We all stood for the second rendition of the national anthem and the “7^th Innings Stretch” - which is kind of like half time...but with a stadium-wide rendition of the apparently well-known Take me to the ball-game which everyone waved their hands and belted out like a kind of second-national anthem. People-watching aside the game was great too; luckily Natalie had brought along a few friends to help explain exactly what was going on...and the Dodgers won!

What a day! We'd been on America soil less than 12 hours and already we'd been part of a truly American experience, and it felt good. Who knows what's ahead of us if we carry on at this rate...