Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for california
Gardens at the Getty
By Linda Tancs
The J. Paul Getty Museum (the Getty) celebrates visual arts of outstanding quality and historical importance at two locales in California. In Los Angeles, the Getty Center houses an international collection of European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts and photography from its beginnings to the present. In Malibu, the Getty Villa is dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome and Etruria. What both venues have in common are extraordinary gardens. Just like ancient Rome, the gardens at the villa are integral to the site, boasting fountains, arbors and reflecting ponds designed after ancient Roman models and planted with species known from the ancient Mediterranean. The heart of the Getty Center is its Central Garden, featuring a natural ravine and tree-lined walkway amidst 500 varieties of plant material. The Center has reopened after a rash of wildfires in the area.
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Breaking Up in Hollywood
By Linda Tancs
Forget about tea and sympathy. Apparently a better way to get over a relationship is to create art about it at the Museum of Broken Relationships in Hollywood, California. Originally founded in Zagreb, in 2010 it won the EMYA Kenneth Hudson Award as the most innovative and daring museum project in Europe. Exhibits include everything from wedding dresses to an ax used to break an ex’s furniture, accompanied by the contributor’s personal yet anonymous story. Cathartic? Maybe. But remember the immortal words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson: ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
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Tallest Deck in California
By Linda Tancs
OUE Skyspace LA is home to California’s tallest open-air observation deck, perched nearly 1,000 feet above downtown Los Angeles in the U.S. Bank Tower. As if stunning panoramic views weren’t enough enticement, Skyspace also lures in daredevils seeking a different kind of view thanks to the Skyslide. That’s a glass tube on the outside of the skyscraper spanning 45 feet from the 70th to the 69th floor. Dispensed like a human cannonball, gliders maneuver their way down the glass on a mat to what is hoped will be a smooth landing. Fingers crossed.
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The Devil’s Teeth
By Linda Tancs
Once known as “the devil’s teeth” due to its treacherous and steep, rocky shoreline, the Farallon Islands (named for the Spanish farallón, meaning a rocky sea pillar) is a National Wildlife Refuge and home to the largest colony of nesting seabirds in the contiguous United States. Located 30 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge in California, the Refuge comprises four groups of small islands: Southeast Farallon, North Farallons, Middle Farallon and Noonday Rock. Given the sensitivity of the avian and mammalian community living there, the islands are not open to the public, and only Southeast Farallon (a research station) is accessible by boat. Nonetheless, year-round tours operate out of San Francisco to the southeast quadrant, offering wildlife enthusiasts the chance to gawk at whales and substantial populations of sea lions, northern elephant seals, tufted puffins and some of more than 400 species of birds recorded there.
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Big Sur’s Golden Gate
By Linda Tancs
Along California’s sun-kissed Pacific Coast Highway is Big Sur‘s celebrated alternative to the Golden Gate Bridge. Known alternatively as Bixby Creek Bridge or Bixby Bridge, the span is a reinforced concrete open-spandrel arch bridge. Completed in 1932, the historic structure is one of the tallest single-span concrete bridges in the world, soaring 260 feet above the bottom of a steep canyon carved by Bixby Creek. A favorite of shutterbugs, the view is particularly impressive from the bridge’s south end at sunset.
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The Crags of Santa Barbara
By Linda Tancs
California’s Rattlesnake Canyon trail moves north and eastward for nearly three miles up Rattlesnake Canyon and ends on Gibraltar Road. Besides the beautiful views of Santa Barbara, Montecito, birds and wildflowers, this part of Santa Barbara’s back country offers the intrepid the formidable Gibraltar Rock. Located next to its namesake road, the formation’s south face is akin to a bunny slope. Those desiring more of a challenge should head for the west face and the cliff’s subsidiary formations. There you’ll meet up with climbs bearing names like Sweating Buckets, The Nose, Toxic Waste Wall and The Bolt Ladder. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
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Art, History and Anthropology
By Linda Tancs
The Grace Hudson Museum and Sun House in Ukiah, California, is an art, history and anthropology museum focusing on the life and works of artist Grace Carpenter Hudson and her ethnologist husband, Dr. John W. Hudson. The result is a treasure trove of cultural and educational resources on Western American art, California Indian cultures and the history of California’s North Coast region. Their legacy is further highlighted by their Craftsman-style home, the Sun House. In addition to their personal touches, the home sports such classic Craftsman elements as a sloping gabled roof with overhang, the sleeping porch, the use of natural redwood and stone, board-and-batten walls, burlap and monks cloth wall coverings and exposed timbers.
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The Golden Age of American Gardens
By Linda Tancs
Draped by the northern Santa Cruz mountains in Woodside, California, Filoli is a country estate with enviable grounds beckoning the Golden Age of private estate gardens. Designed between 1917 and 1929 for prominent San Franciscans Mr. and Mrs. William Bowers Bourn, its grounds are remarkably preserved as one of the few surviving and best examples of an English Renaissance style garden. Its many charms also include the Sunken Garden and clock tower, a 6.8-acre orchard and a trail system highlighting five different ecosystems. No less elegant, the gracious country house adorning the estate boasts 36,000 square feet, resplendent in an extensive collection of 17th and 18th century English antiques among its 43 rooms.
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World’s Largest Tree
By Linda Tancs
A giant among giants, the General Sherman in the Giant Forest in California’s Sequoia National Park is not only the largest living tree in the world, but the largest living organism, by volume, on the planet. A giant sequoia (sequoiadendron giganteum), General Sherman is over 100 feet at its trunk, nearly 3 million pounds in weight and 275 feet in height. Needless to say, it draws quite a crowd, which is why the park runs free summer shuttle buses to two separate stops, one above and one below this amazing tree.
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The Birthplace of Los Angeles
By Linda Tancs
The oldest section in Los Angeles is the plaza area known as Olvera Street. Also known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, Calle Olvera and La Placita Olvera, it’s located two blocks from Los Angeles City Hall. A popular attraction for both tourists and locals, it’s home to the oldest house (now a museum and visitors’ center), Avila Adobe, saved from demolition in the 1920s by Christine Sterling. She later realized her dream of creating a market plaza that would celebrate the area’s Spanish and Mexican heritage. Today, Olvera Street remains a bustling marketplace with music, food, crafts and folklore celebrations. Free guided tours of El Pueblo are conducted by volunteer docents, Las Angelitas del Pueblo, Tuesday through Saturday at 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. The tours start at the Las Angelitas del Pueblo office, located next to the Old Plaza Firehouse.
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