Towards the end of the pilgrimage

Santa Barbara Beach in the evening

It’s always the same when a journey nears its end. It acquires a new urgency and vigour. What didn’t we see and can we remember everything that we did. Where did we stay 6 nights ago and what was the mane of beach where we saw a certain seabird?

I hope that I have been able to lay down some of those memories in this blog. The blog is about the 4 friends, about how we started in Seattle with no formal plan but a booked flight from Los Angeles and it’s about how well we got on. Martin and Liz have been the best of companions and we have shared all the high and low points together and prospered.

Martin mentioned a quote and neither of us could remember its origin. “In the past people used to travel for their religion but now travel is their religion”  We too have been on a journey that would have been a pilgrimage. All journeys have a spiritual element. They challenge you, stimulate you and question you. This is certainly the case with us. We have not travelled for the sake of it but to try to assimilate a big powerful country and understand more of what Americana means to us and the rest of the world.

While the American Colonies were fighting to throw off the yolk of the British crown in the east, The Mexicans and Spanish were establishing outposts along this coast and linking them up by a road. Their aim was to join each outpost or mission by a road with a day’s journey between them. They started by founding San Diego in 1769 and finished in San Francisco in 1823. Their route was called the Camino Real and US-101 follows this route today. All those Spanish place names on our journey were missions and religious establishments. Even in the New World, one can follow an ancient religious pilgrimage route.

That Hotel California Moment

Santa Barbara was known by the Spanish as the Queen of Missions and I would stay there again. We only saw the beach and the marina but it’s a relaxed and cool place. It’s a beautiful location to see the sun go down behind the palms and the forest of masts (reminiscent of the cover of Hotel California). Drinking Mojitos on our wedding anniversary at sunset, watching the pelicans diving into the water just doesn’t get a lot better!

 Jacqui and I on our wedding anniversary

 Liz gets eaten by a whale

The temperature rises, the countryside becomes more arid and the mark of man is more prominent. The evergreen giants are now replaced by giant King Palms but it all looks great and just as you expect Southern California to look.

Route 1 quickly transforms itself into a freeway but it still hugs the coastline and the sun blinds us as it reflects off the sea. Houses start to encroach onto the beach, as if they almost want to live upon the ocean. Martin comments that the “houses are overhanging the sea desperately hoping to withstand the next great storm”

An empty beautiful Zuma Beach

We begin to hit “Beach-land California”. Each name resonates in our memory as a location used in a television programme or a book. We have mysteriously turned into celebrity seeking tourists. Our first stop is at Zuma beach where some of the episodes of Bay Watch were filmed. Liz is in raptures as we pass 2 separate filming locations. We are getting the LA bug!

To many, much of this could look like indiscriminate building, urban overspill and shabby sprawl. To us its what we wanted to see. As Jacqui says, "its not what you look at, its what you see" Malibu is just like that but its Malibu. We walked to the end of the Pier immortalised by Paul Newman and looked over the parking lot used in the Rockford Files. There is nothing there to remind us, even the bar on the pier is closed. Thos cocktails will have to wait!

 Baywatch

 Malibu from the pier

Somewhere to park your board

LA is famous for some of its canyons which still retain wildness despite the fact that the city has encroaches around them. Names such as Topanga and Laurel Canyons have always harboured people with alternative views, opinions and lifestyles. Topanga became an alternative folk community in the 50s with blacklisted Will Geer and folk singers such as Woody Guthrie making it their home.

Will Geer

The hippies moved there in the 60s and this was followed by a multitude of famous musicians such as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Marvin Gaye. Billy Preston, Stephen Stills, Bernie Leadon, Gram Parsons, Jim Morison, Mick Fleetwood, Taj Mahal, Alice Copper, Van Morrison, Ryan Bingham, Members of Canned Heat etc…. Neil Young recorded his seminal album “After The Gold Rush in the Canyon”

Wild Topanga Canyon in the middle of LA

 Neil Young

After the Gold Rush

I have always wanted to visit the Paul Getty collection in Los Angeles. Getty and his advisors bought European Art in vast quantities after the war and in the subsequent decades. His appetite for art matched the frenzy with which the English aristocracy bought up Europe a century earlier. I cannot quite understand this obsession that Americans have for all things Europe. Not a piece of Eastern or Islamic art was to be seen in this wonderful place.

The Getty Centre is new, expensive and wonderful. The collection was good but it has gaps and lacks the depth that some of the great European collections have. Still a marvellous experience and I came across some rare treasures which I have been posted below

 John Paul Getty

 Masaccio: The highlight of the exhibition; Western art would had been so different had he lived longer

An early Van Dyke: One of the best portrait painters of all time 

I love the Spanish painter Ribara. He paints old people wonderfully 

Head of  a Woman: Michael Sweerts 1654: One of the exhibition highlights and so modern

 A rare homely portrait by French painter David

This guys is gradually becoming one of my favourite painters: The Milliners by Degas

The Getty Museum 

What would any European Museum give for a venue such as this?

Our hotel was on Santa Monica Boulevard, reputedly 3 miles from the Getty Centre. We arrived on the Boulevard to find that our hotel was number 3070 and the road numbers were over 12000 and going up as we drove down the road. We turned around and spent the next 2 hours battling against the Friday LA rush hour traffic up into the seedy parts of LA to find our hotel. Liz who told us that she retained good karma about the location began to get worried when she saw shops selling bondage equipment and posters offering free HIV testing. Who would have thought that we were going the wrong way and that the road (in our original direction) changed numbers when we entered the city of Santa Monica. We arrived eventually in Santa Monica 2 hours later. Thank god! Martin deserves an OBE for getting us back safely.

LA from the Getty Centre

Two guys taking their pet dinosaur for a walk at the Getty

And finally, Santa Monica represents the end of Route 66 as it final travels to the sea. It is the great mother road that brought people to this once deserted coast. How these road watch the journeys of our lives and intertwine