Highlights of our last week in California

Three months after coming home, and I still haven't finished writing about our trip, so now is the time to draw it to a close with a brief overview of our last week in California. Highlights included:

- a day trip into Tijuana in Mexico - very tacky, but lots of fun, with cheap shopping and tasty and spicy enchilladas





- Ocean Beach - spent a long afternoon at this low-key bohemian beach, watching the surfers, looking in rock pools, watching the sun go down - this remains an abiding and very happy memory of our whole trip .... the golden light, all of us together, nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in

- Getty Museum in LA - beautifully situated in the hills with a fabulous vista to the bay. Gleaming white marble set in perfectly manicured gardens. A relatively small but high quality collection of art

- a drive out to Malibu Beach for the quintessential southern Californina beach experience. Catherine and I hired surfboards and joined the thorngs of surfers waiting for the (very frequent) rideable waves. I had no success at all, failing to stnad up for more than a few seconds, but had a few good rides. We could have got in lots of practice as the waves were so good, but the problem was that it was so tiring swimming out through the broken waves to where they were breaking. I felt I needed to be a lot fitter to be able to do this, and when you look at surfers they are a fit bunch. Another problem was that there were lots of rocks on the sand under the water, and we ended up with cuts on our feet and ankles. But its not a surprise that Malibu is a world-renowned surf spot - it has great waves that run for 100 metres or more. The best sight of the day was a bronzed, pony-talied dude riding a wave into shore whilst sitting on his surfbaord in the lotus position, thumbs and forefingers together and eyes closed!
Barbara didn't have too good a time on the beach - she had a migraine, and was then stung by a wasp that she had stepped on in the sand. We left early to drive back "home", and spent some time in the pool before going out for the evening with Barbara's old friends from animation days in London.