Someday I'll Have A Villa

One of my side trips while I was in LA was a drive up to the Getty Villa in Malibu, CA. For those of you who don't know, the Getty Villa is one of those places only some wealthier-than-thou, eccentric guy, who clearly has too much time on his hands, could think of. J. Paul Getty replicated an actual real villa from the ruins of Herculaneum, which is the next town over from Pompeii. the craziest thing is that Getty never actually visited his faux-Roman house before he died!

I had a nice day there. Not only are the buildings modeled after a real Roman villa, but so are the grounds. The Getty Center employs all sorts of botanists, gardeners, climatologists and other researchers who have researched the soil and weather patterns in Italy to figure out what plants could grow in the climate and soils of sunny Malibu.

The whole place is pretty amazing and I spent a lot more time there than I had intended. The weather was great, and I asked one of the nice gardener guys to take my picture:

I know I'm wearing shorts and a short-sleeve shirt in this picture, but I was actually freezing my ass off. The Pacific Ocean breeze was freaking cold that day. I almost got a "Getty Villa" sweatshirt, but I'm not a Japanese tourist.