Crazy L.A.

75 deg. F. early Saturday morning in Indian Wells. After another peaceful and delicious breakfast on the patio of the Miramonte Hotel we started at 8 am towards Los Angeles - a 2-hour drive. When we approached the L.A. metro area it became cloudy and "smoggy", and, much, much cooler. Traffic was moving, fortunately, we had chosen a weekend for the drive, but, nevertheless, all the lanes (12+) and some crazy drivers don't make driving in the L.A. Metro Area really a pleasure.


We parked at The Broad (pics above), the latest art museum in town, which we haven't seen yet. It's adjacent to the Disney Concert Hall by Gehry (pic). We've had a hard-hat tour in the museum during our last visit, but now we admired the result!

We went for a walk through downtown afterwards, to the new shopping district "The Bloc", the new OUE Observation Deck, to the Grand Central Market (getting more fancy !) and the Jewelry District, as well as to the "Last Bookstore". How could we have overseen such a superb independant bookstore for so long?

Drove to the Petersen Automotive Museum with its new fassade (pic below, left) and the construction site of the new Academy Museum of Moving Pictures (below, right) - parking is a pain in the a.. in L.A.! - to take pictures before heading out towards Anaheim, where we arrived at about 2:30 pm. Returned the rental car at AVIS closeby our congress hotel, the Hilton, and walked over, which took us about 15 minutes.

Met the first colleagues and friends in the lobby and just had a little time to change, but didn't even unpack before heading out to the Colorado Party on the rooftop terrace of a restaurant in walking distance. Good food - they flew in two chefs from Colorado! -, good drinks and live entertainment.

Thanks to the "California Plaza" an area with promotional boothes of different California regions set inbetween the Convention Center and the main convention hotels, we met more people afterwards and had a glass of Sonoma wine.