Getty Museum - impossible to visit by foot

Fox theatre - Westwood 

Having a day longer in LA than expected, we decided to add a visit the Getty Museum into our trip.

We had a lazy start to the morning and then caught the bus up to suburb of Westwood, where we'd planned to change onto a second bus for the Getty Museum. I was in need of some breakfast so before getting onto the next bus we decided to go in search of some food.

With the nearby University of California campus and some interesting art deco buildings (like the Fox theatre above) the suburb had something about it, although the café we chose for breakfast wasn't super exciting.

Becks outside the Getty Museum

Fortified with breakfast, rather than getting a second bus to the museum, we decided to strike out on foot. Our walk to the museum turned into a bit of a farce.

We saw a large green space on the map and thought we might be able to do about half the walk through a park. It turned out that the green space on the map was a military cemetery that was most definitely closed to the public, so we had to walk along the outside the cemetery instead.

We then cut through some pleasant back streets and onto Sunset Boulevard. Wouldn't it be amazing to walk along one of LAs most famous streets? It turns out that it's a very long road and we were at the rather drab tail end.....

At the end of Sunset Boulevard we had to cross a rather major intersection not really designed for pedestrians. Successfully negotiated, we reached what the map showed as the closest entrance to the museum, only to find that it was a goods and staff entrance only. We still had another mile to go before the visitor entrance!

Autumn leaves

Our joy slightly dented we set out again. The took a couple of residential streets parallel to the highway until they ran out around 600m from the museum entrance. I was tempted to see if we could walk up the grass verge of the dual carriage way, but there was no real verge to speak of. It seemed completely ludicrous, but defeated, we called a taxi to take us the final few hundred meters.

The taxi took ages to arrive as the driver got lost on the way. His satnav also wanted to take him to the goods / staff entrance that we'd been to earlier and he didn't seem to like my suggestion that he was going the wrong way.

Finally we made it to the museum. A simple walk had turned into a bit of an ordeal in a very pedestrian unfriendly city.

Sunset views from the Getty Museum

Despite the adventure in getting there, the Getty Museum was definitely worth the visit. With the sun setting we spent most of our time outside admiring the great architecture, gardens, views of the city and the golden sun setting over the ocean.

Once the sun had set we headed inside the galleries for a speedy look round before the museum shut. The museum is separated into different pavilions and we spent time enjoying a Japanese photography exhibition before speed walking round as much of the rest of the museum as we could before it closed.

Leaving the museum we took the bus back to Westwood with a few other staff and visitors. We new better than to try walking this time....