Day 6 :: 26 January 2007 :: Santa Clarita to Huntington Beach
First things first, we got doughnuts at this doughnut shop where Jenn's family used to get doughnuts every Sunday morning. It was a sort of gag gift for her mom and sister. Then we started heading down toward Orange County.
But first we stopped at the J. Paul Getty Museum. What a kewl frakking place! No vehicle access to the museum, you have to take a tram up there. And all this marble! It is so pretty and sparkly and pristinely bright…and to die for! Many, many gardens and pools around the place. I was easily in love rather quickly. We went through several of the buildings, but didn't go up to the second floors on most of them. I fell in love with the exhibit on illuminated manuscripts. Such beautiful pieces of art! And the Greek statues were lovely, as well. When we were in the area of the European arts, we found a couple of really big beds that were frakking kewl! We took pics of one of them, but I'm not sure I can futz with the dark pics [we couldn't use flash] enough to be worth showing them off or not.
The main thing I wanted to see at the Getty was the exhibit on the Icons of Sinai. What beautiful artwork…and lovely history to learn about. Jenn was very generous and let me wander pretty much as much as I wanted to. I'm very grateful for that, as I know it's one of her things…
After that, we headed down toward Huntington Beach, but we stopped off to visit our buddy Mark first. I haven't seen Mark in 5 years now, and it was very nice to finally get to spend time with him. We talked for a while, then made our way to HB, where we went past the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. I got to see egrets and pelicans there. I also got to see the beaches at Huntington Beach, and the Ruby's out on the pier, but more on that later… Then we stopped at Jenn's mom's place to drop off stuff [we stayed there while we were in the LA/OC area] and get ready for dinner.
Dinner was some of the best Japanese food I've ever had at Matsu with Jenn, her mom, her brother & sister-in-law, and Mark. What a great time! They liked their gifts. I am especially happy that Bonnie liked the copper necklace and earrings set I made for her. It was my first time working with copper, and I liked it enough that it's going to become my "specialty." Not many people work with the copper that I've seen. I think the funniest part of dinner that night was when Jenn gave Vanessa the Victoria's Secret gift card and Carl made the comment of "I don't think she's gonna model what she buys for you," which caused Vanessa to stab him in the arm with a pen. Was quite amusing!
Anyway, after dinner, we headed into Long Beach and went to The Library, a coffee place that Jenn and Mark always hung out at. It was way kewl to finally go there, even if all I had was cider with caramel. Very yummy. And then we took Mark home so we could all get a good night's sleep, as we would be doing Disneyland the next day. And I certainly wanted to be well rested for that!