Feed

Our day in LA was spent scooting around to different galleries. We went to the Broad, LACMA, and the Grammy Museum. The Broad is just fantastic for the building itself and always has fun artwork to see. The Grammy Museum felt a bit dated, but I did enjoy standing next to Taylor Swift's dress.

Again, thankfully we have our AGO reciprocal membership, so we got into all these places for free. Although, I do think the Grammy Museum could be a little more interactive and a little more interesting. I would like more videos of clips from the Grammys and performances, that kind of stuff.

We wrapped up our trip with a lovely dinner at Sushi Samba with our friends Richard and Jim, at the beautiful new restaurant in West Hollywood, where I had one of the best desserts I've ever had.

We decided to go to La Jolla for the day on our entrance into San Diego. We had been to San Diego before, so there wasn't much that we really wanted to see, but we wanted to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art up in La Jolla. So we took an Uber up and walked around the lovely little town.

One of the highlights we ran into was at a coffee shop, where a lady was actually wearing a Lake Ontario shirt. I asked her about it, and she said she even has one from when he tried to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico. Lovely to run into people like that.

The museum was really adorable, right on the water, and thanks to our AGO pass, we got reciprocal entrance without having to pay any fee. What a great benefit to have.

Today our stop is Catalina Island… and island off the coast of Los Angeles. And adorable little town with wild buffalo and golf carts.

The famous landmark is the Casino… which is not a casino. A circular theatre built in 1933. Theatre downstairs and a ballroom and now roller skating rink upstairs.

The building is so beautiful… the theatre is lovely and the old ballroom has its charm. The outside terrace also gives spectacular views.

I did the Lovers Cove Excursion through Virgin Voyages and it was just splendid, the conditions were fantastic. The water wasn't too cold (although I did appreciate the wet suit) and the visibility was amazing. I took this video with my Insta360 X6 + Dive Kit. Please disregard my hand as I forgot my waterproof stick so borrowed a short floaty attachment from the dive shop's lost and found.

This video is uploaded in it's full 360 glory, so when you open in YouTube you can use the joystick to move around what you are looking at. The best spot to view I think is at 35:54 when the school of Garibaldi swim by.

A man smiling outdoors in swim trunks by a coastal walkway, with a large Virgin Voyages cruise ship anchored in the ocean behind him.

A few weeks before heading to the cruise, a friend mentioned that there are kelp forests off the coast of Catalina Island that you can snorkel around. I was immediately intrigued, until I found out that I had to wear a wetsuit because the water is normally pretty chilly.

I did sign up for the Virgin Voyages excursion, the two-hour snorkeling in the kelp forest, and I'm so glad I did it. It gave me a secured spot off the ship since Catalina Island is a tender port, and I was ready and waiting to go at 9:30 in the morning.

For a moment, I was thinking that maybe I was going to cancel, because we were coming from the north and it was cold the night before on deck. So I was a little worried that I'd be freezing, and it just didn't sound appealing. But I am so glad I did it. You have to wear a wetsuit because it's the Pacific and it is cold, but the water was actually pretty warm.

I had my new dive kit for my Insta360 X6 that I was excited to use, even though I forgot my dive tripod, so some of the video looks a little strange. Thankfully, the dive center had a floaty handle in their lost and found that I could attach to my camera.

We then met our guide, who was lovely and has lived on the island for five years, and we walked along to Lover's Cove, where we entered the water. It was crystal clear, the kelp swaying in the waves, thousands upon thousands of fish. The highlight, of course, is the Garibaldi fish, which are orange, and thankfully contrasted with the water and the other fish, which were pretty much all gray.

We did see a couple of sea turtles and a baby ray, which was pretty cool. At one point, we found an abalone shell, and the guide dove down and got it, so we got to take a close look at an abalone shell, which are just beautiful.

There are some tour groups that come around, two of which are in sort of a half-submerged submarine where people can go in and see the water without getting wet. One of those came by, and apparently they have little buttons they can push that spit out food, so the fish all come around the bottom of the half-submarine. We waited till the submarine was gone and got to swim through even more fish than were there before the feeding ship came by. It was really cool and such a great experience.

Thanks to Ursula for alerting me to this amazing experience. Brad opted to not join me for this one, he isn't much of a snorkeler and enjoyed sleeping in!