Pretty decent times today: in the morning a few of us checked out the subway system. We then spent the afternoon at The Getty Center and closed off the day by singing at the ISU Alumni reception. If you want anything more detailed… you’re going to have to click the link.
Dr. Rodde and 5 adventurous singers (myself included) took a trip on the Red line to see if it would work well to get the Singers to their destinations. It wasn’t too bad… once we actually got tickets. The “super-cool” ticket machines that dispense day-passes for $3 only took dollars and fives. Well, that’s okay, since there was a change machine right next to them that took 10’s and 20’s. It dispensed an assortment of old silver (were they called Liberty?) dollars and the new gold dollar coins. Feeding these into the machines proved to be a bit of a challenge. In the end, we decided that the 7th&Metro machines only took the silver coins and sometimes one-dollar bills. That’s great if you have $207 in dollar bills to get the choir around for a day! Once we got down to the subway, a couple straggling members of the group (I swear, it wasn’t me! I was the first one on the train) got caught in the door, causing it to re-open. When it didn’t shut, we heard the conductor saying something about “we’ll be delayed while I go back and shut a door someone left open.” Whoops. Once we determined we were on the wrong train anyway, we stepped off just as the conductor got to us and scolded us for not pulling the door shut. We caught the next train, boarded without any difficulties, and jumped off two stops later to find one of our concert sites only about a block away. Not too bad.
We hopped back on the subway (properly, of course) heading the other direction to check out the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Again, the ride was without incident, but we did notice several more homeless people near the Civic Center. Again, also, the cathedral was only about a block away. We rode back to Pershing Square to check out the station about which our travel agent said “don’t use that one at night.” Well, during the day, it’s pretty cool… with neon lights and stuff. Plus, the machines take both coins without any problem! Maybe we can do this 69-ticket-binge thing after all.
When we got back to the hotel, we headed off to the Getty Center with our new favorite bus driver Robert. We were supposed to be on the lookout for food on the way there, but missed the exit for the large McDonalds. Actually, this was okay, because we grabbed one later on with the hope of running into SOME kind of food. We ended up stopping the bus (in a perfect parking spot) right by a KFC, a burger place, a Mexican place, and a Chinese place. It was the first time I’ve had KFC in… maybe forever? Chicken, biscuit, potatoes, and corn on the cob made for a tasty lunch. After a couple of detours due to unmarked, closed on-ramps, we were headed back to the Getty.
The Getty was huge! High atop a hill (mountain?) it was full of art inside, and had great gardens and architecture outside. And from the top level, I got some great panoramic shots of Los Angeles (assuming PhotoStitch is nice to me). They had a new system called GettyGuide that was supposed to track where you were in the museum and then tell you interesting facts about it…. It was their first day with it; it didn’t seem to work too well for me, though some people said they got interesting info from it. I guess I just wanted to go somewhere, pick a location from a menu and hear something rather than follow the pre-determined tours programmed into the Guide. Anyway, I did get a ton of pictures and a short movie from the tram-ride, but the stupid CF card was full before we reached the bottom…. I really need a bigger one of those.
The ride back to the hotel took about 50% longer than we expected (yay, LA traffic!), so we quickly changed and walked the 4 blocks to our reception site. A brief warm-up reminded us that we do, after all, know how to sing and sing well. The “food” was horderves with some hot beef. Note to self: be glad the standard Eastern-Iowa Catholic wedding reception food is not just horderves. I ate some bread, meat, and some cheese that wasn’t very good. Have these people ever heard of Wisconsin? Anyway, we sang a short concert for them, headed back to the hotel, and plopped in bed by 9:00. Big day tomorrow!