Friday   Los Angeles

I was at the Whale of a Wash Laundromat at 7.15am.  Then breakfast and a walk along the beachfront to the pier at Manhattan Beach, in the 1920s and 30s it was billed as the ‘safest beach in America’ in promotional material. There was no indication on what basis this claim was made, probably fewer people drowned than elsewhere. Lots of people walking their dogs, or having other people walk their dogs for them. I was very pleased to meet a man coming towards me with two Bassett Hounds. I swerved in front of them and they were pleased to stop and get a pat from me and slobber all over my hands.

Then I got the satnav to direct me (and the car) to the Getty Museum, which is on a hill looking out on all the smog covering Los Angeles. The museum charges no entry fee, but it does charge $15 for parking. The parking station is at the bottom of the hill and small automated trains take visitors up the hill to the museum entrance.

The museum was founded by J. Paul Getty, who took a fortune left to him by his father and, by finding lots of oil, turned it into such a pile of money that he was, in the 1950s, considered to be the richest man in the world.

Getty endowed two museums in Los Angeles; one at Malibu built in the style of a Roman villa, which contains Greek, Roman and Etruscan art works; and the one I visited which has European and American art works from the Renaissance onwards.

The works on display were impressive but I came away more impressed by the building than the contents. The building was designed by Richard Meier, an American architect who usually makes prominent use of the colour white in his buildings; this is certainly true of the Getty as there isn’t a colour anywhere. The principal visible building material is 16,000 tons of Italian travertine marble.

On the way back to Manhattan Beach I stopped at an In N Out burger place for lunch. Supposedly the burgers are unchanged since the business was founded in 1948, and the one I had certainly tasted like the traditional burger rarely found in Australia these days.