VISITS AND VACATIONS

Hello ladies and gents this is the viking telling you that today we are talking about

3 THINGS TO DO IN LOS ANGELES

Hollywood Sign

1. Hollywood Sign


Put up in 1923 and originally spelling “Hollywoodland”, a real estate development, the unmistakeable Hollywood Sign was only supposed to last for 18 months.

The arrival of the Golden Age of Hollywood changed all that, and the sign has remained on Mount Lee in Griffith Park ever since, and dropping “land” in 1949. This landmark was rebuilt in steel in 1978 and was last repainted in 2005. One of the easiest vantage points in the basin is the raised patio on the north-east corner of the Hollywood & Highland Center Mall, and there’s another atop the Home Depot parking garage on Sunset Boulevard.

You can go in for an up-close look on a hike at Griffith Park, or park up at Lake Hollywood Park and admire the sign across the canyon.

Suggested tour: Hollywood Sign Small Group Tour in Luxury Van

2. The Getty Center

  The Getty Center, L.A.

The main branch of the J. Paul Getty Museum is in Brentwood, surveying Los Angeles from its hilltop roost. The museum’s founder was petro-industrialist Jean Paul Getty, who left another $661m to the institution when he passed away in 1976. This went towards a spectacular and labyrinthine new complex, the Getty Center, which opened in 1997 after almost two decades of planning and construction.

Linked to its lower car park by a hovertrain, the Getty Center is a multifaceted attraction.

You’ll fall in love with architecture by Pritzker Prize-winner Richard Meier, the ever-changing Central Garden, the Cactus Garden, the outdoor sculpture and the knockout views, not to mention the astonishing art collection within (Medieval times to the present). Allow as long as possible to bask in the illuminated manuscripts, Italian, Flemish and Dutch painting from the 17th to the 19th century, the huge assortment of Impressionist painting and exquisite decorative arts.

Irises by van Gogh (1889) and Rembrandt Laughing (self-portrait, 1628) are not to be missed.



3. Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens

Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens

Among the world’s great research libraries, the Huntington in San Marino, Los Angeles County, holds more than nine million items, from the 1000s to the 21st century. For an everyday visitor, the Library Exhibition Hall draws from these enormous reserves, showing a captivating miscellany, from Medieval manuscripts to documents from Abraham Lincoln’s life.

The library is in 120 acres of lush botanical gardens, with magnificent living collections of orchids, bonsai, cycads and camellias.You can saunter past lily ponds, and through a subtropical garden, desert garden, Japanese garden and Chinese garden.

Don’t ignore the trove of painting, sculpture and decorative arts at the Huntington Art Gallery, with works by Rogier van der Weyden, Gainsborough and American artists like Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol.

I hope you liked this post and as always have a chilled day from the Viking

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