Los Angeles

Augie

We haven't been doing too much interesting since our arrival in LA, just catching up with Ros's sons and Augie our little grandson. Here he is playing in a water playground. On Monday, we went to Luke's office to see his new expanded workspace and ended up staying there most of the day, while I upgraded the office computer to a solid state drive as it had been going very slowly. Luke has also lent us his car, a VW Jetta station wagon, thus saving us heaps of rental money.

Downtown LA

On Wednesday, Luke invited us to dinner to meet his new girlfriend Khristina, who lives in an apartment in downtown LA. In four visits to this city, this was the first time we had ventured into the actual heart of the city. The traffic was awful, it took us an hour and half to do a normally 30 minute journey.
We were taken to a Brazilian restaurant a couple of blocks from Khristina's apartment and had a sumptuous meal featuring all you could eat steak night. You got your own salads from a buffet, and waiters would wander around with different cuts of meat and slice you a piece anytime you wanted one. I had lamb, filet mignon, garlic beef and ribeye steak, followed by a delicious key lime pie. That diet is moving further and further away from us.
Khristina works fo a building company and is building a skyscraper just a stone's throw from her apartment. She also surfs, plays guitars and is into music a lot.

View from roof

This is the view from the roof of Khristina's apartment. The building to the left of the brown one is the current building Khristina's company is building. After the restaurant we sat out on her balcony just drinking in the view and the lights of downtown LA. Quite enjoyable. When we were asked what we were planning to do while we were here, we mentioned that we'd like to pop down to San Diego and take a look. Turns out Khristina is from San Diego so we have organised to go down together the weekend after this one and she will be our guide.

Petersen's Auto Museum

And just to add some spice to the photos, saw this unusual building whilst driving around LA, it is the Petersen Auto Museum and contains early and later model American cars. Not sure if we will have time to look inside it. Tonight we are staying with Joshua and Samantha in an AirBNB a few miles away from Michelle's place. They had originally booked it to go to the Tears for Fears concert, but unfortunately it has been postponed, so we'll probably go and see a movie instead. Dunkirk has just been released and is looking good.
More later on from Santa Barbera.