Sunday May 15th

I woke up in a bit of a ‘blah’ mood, not wanting to do a lot. I forced myself to shower and eat breakfast before the free breakfast ended in the kitchen, then played on the internet whilst I decided on my move for the day.

The Getty museum was described as one of the best museums in L.A., if not the US, and had been highly recommended to me by Vineet. Using the instructions provided to me by the hostel, I set out to the corner of Ocean and Colorado Avenues to find the bus stop. Only problem – the Santa Monica Fun Run was on, and the streets were all closed to traffic! I did manage to get to the street corner, but the bus stop didn’t even exist, so I didn’t know where to head next.

I decided to do a loop of Santa Monica, looking at all of the bus stops to see if I can find an alternative departure point for this particular bus. Failing that, I also tried to find an alternative bus that would take me where I wanted to go. However nothing seemed to match what I wanted, and growing extremely frustrated I walked to the Visitor’s Centre.

The lady there gave me directions to the Getty Villa (different to the Getty Museum), using a direct bus that left nearby, as well as handing me an admission ticket. Frustrated at the delays already this morning, I decided to follow her instructions to the Villa and forgo the museum experience. Of course, the bus took forever to come (forever meaning 45 minutes, which is forever when the sun is burning and the wind is blowing!)

I must have looked poor because the bus driver waved me on, refusing to let me pay the $1.50 bus fare. Finally, something good for the day! (This of course backfired later ….) I knew the street address of the villa, so kept a look out at the addresses on the side of the road. As we passed a sign that said ‘Getty Villa, 1 mile’, I rang the bell and alighted at the next stop. Another mistake … we were still ages away from the Villa, and I was now in the middle of residential Malibu, left to walk along the shoulder of the highway.


After a 15 minute walk, I finally found the entrance to the Getty Villa, and crossed the road to the pedestrian entrance, where a worker came to meet me. “How did you get here?” he asked. I replied that I’d caught a bus part of the way and then walked the remainder. “Where is your bus ticket?” he asked. I explained that the bus driver had waved me on for free, so I didn’t have a ticket to show. “You can’t enter the museum if you don’t have a bus ticket then.” What!??? “Why?” I asked. He explained it was because people parked their car in the residential area, so you needed to either pay and park in their carpark or show a taxi/bus receipt to enter. How dumb! He’d obviously seen me walk across the street – that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard! This is a museum which is outside the LA limits, and when I was there I hadn’t seen one person enter – and it was a free museum, wouldn’t they want to encourage people to visit!

I was too mad to want to stay, so I stormed off to the bus stop. Luckily this bus didn’t take too long to come, and I went straight back into Santa Monica. Having wasted a full morning by now, I couldn’t be bothered doing anything else for the day, instead having lunch at the English tea-room across from the hostel and playing on my laptop again, checking all of my reservations for the next days.


I couldn’t spend all afternoon on the internet though, so I decided to see another movie – “Something Borrowed”, with Kate Hudson and Ginnifer Goodwin. It was quite good for a chick-flick (romantic comedy) - I'll need to read the book on which it's based now.

The night consisted of packing up my bags, readying myself for my journey to San Francisco tomorrow - I'm being picked up at 7:25am so it's an early start!