Despite all the glitz and glamour, the best experiences we had in LA were the ones that cost nothing. Not many people would know that there is a NASA facility in LA. Getting a ticket is harder than Taylor Swift but unlike Taylor, the tour is free. The Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) is where they design and build all the incredible robots sent to space by NASA, (everything that doesn’t carry a human). When the guide asked the audience why would we send robots and not humans, B piped up:
They don’t need food, oxygen, or water, and they don’t get sick.
And they do ridiculously cool stuff like mapping the universe, exploring planets, and looking for life beyond Earth. At JPL, there’s a mini museum of all the robotic orbiters, landers, and rovers that NASA have ever sent to space. We toured mission control for all the robots and saw the robots connecting to satellites around the world sending and receiving information. There is a live connection of robots to the Canberra satellite. We saw the facility where they are building the latest robot to be sent to space.
Clockwise from top left: Voyager 1, Mars Rover, Mars Perseverance, JPL’s cleanroom with their latest robot about to be unboxed, Mission Control, A and B taking a closer look at Galileo.
JPL was not enough space exploration so we headed to the Observatory at Griffith Park (where we also hiked Mount Hollywood and viewed the Hollywood sign) to see a timeline of space and see how much we weighed on each planet in the universe.
Weighing in at the Observatory and B giving Einstein a poke in the eye.
What are we pointing at? The Hollywood sign.
We got a glimpse of the future with all the space travel, but we also went back back in time to Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt at the Getty Villa Museum in Malibu. The Getty is a full scale reproduction of the Villa Dei Papyri, an ancient Roman villa in Herculaneum (close to Pompeii) which was preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. According to John Paul Getty, who funded the project,
One could say, ‘Go to Pompeii and Herculaneum and see Roman villas the way they are now - then go to Malibu and see the way they were in ancient times.’
Our family is fascinated by ancient history and it is partly due to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. A started reading it and put the rest of the family on to it. We are all massive PJ fans (except L, who only made it through the Lightning Thief). I wanted to call this blog the ‘Demigods’ World Tour’ but was vetoed. The Getty has free entry, a free PJ audio tour, and a free wristband when you find out the identity of your Godly parent. The building and the gardens filled with antiquities are a rich immersive experience into the lives of upper class Romans. It’s befitting that the Getty is situated amongst the rich and famous of LA in Malibu.
Left to right, top to bottom: B, demigod, in her Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, Perfectly manicured mediterranean gardens of the villa, meeting Zeus, Poseidon with close-up, Warrior Dad on the side of a Grecian urn, Amphitheatre, Claimed as children of Apollo and Aphrodite, Leaving.
En route home from Malibu, we experienced an entirely contrasting cultural phenomena, Santa Monica pier and beach. Dad and I decided that if St Kilda beach in Melbourne and Chowpatty beach in Mumbai fell in love and had a baby in California, it would be Santa Monica beach and pier. It was everything the Getty Malibu wasn’t. It was a loud, kitsch, colourful cornucopia of craziness crammed with restaurants and bars, fair rides, religious preachers, street entertainers, vendors, fishermen, beachgoers and home to the chunkiest squirrels in America who are out in force and in charge of the foreshore. Even FF, the girls’ cousin was aghast,
I live here and even I’ve never seen this many squirrels! And they are soooo chunky!
In the strangest ways, America is indeed a land of excess.