Friday, July 3rd

We returned from our vacation to Los Angeles early last week. There is much to talk about the town itself, things we saw and did and of course the Dwell Home Tour.

I prefer to give vacation summaries in the form of a random list of highlights, excerpts, etc.:

1. Beard Papa's - a franchise of chain stores. Cream puffs!
2. We stayed in Little Tokyo and we walking distance to nearly endless sushi places! There was bubble tea, frozen yogurt, Katsu, asian bookstores and more. It was heaven.
3. Went to the Huntington. You must get to the Huntington if you're in LA. It was Henry & Arabella Huntington's house that was built in the 1920's, plus the surrounding botanical gardens which covers 120 acres. There's also a couple of museums. The cactus garden there is humungous and all of the plants are thriving. There's a plethora of wildlife, too, including squirrels, lizards, hummingbirds, other birds, a family of quail!, bees and more.
4. Went to the Getty Villa in Malibu - this is where the orginal Getty was before the fancy one on the hill was built. It was constructed in the 70's after a roman villa, buried by Mt. Vesuvius. It houses a lovely pool and gardens plus a lot of antiquities.
5. We popped by the Dwell on Design trade show and we able to cover it in about an hour. It was good --mostly tile, flooring and cabinet samples. Didn't really feel like I discovered too much that was new. I'm glad we went though.
6. The Dwell home tour included 6 houses in the eastside on Saturday and 6 houses on the westsite on Sunday. It was amazing - I highly recommend a homes tour if you ever have the chance. Inspiring.