First Time Up at the Getty

Took our daughter and her friends to the Getty — first time for all of us, somehow, after years of driving past here on other trips. You park at the bottom of the hill and a little white tram hauls you up through the scrub to the museum, which is its own strange thing: white metal and rough travertine stacked up against a clear blue sky.

They humored us for a group picture on the big steps, then mostly did their own orbit while we did ours.

Best part was the Central Garden. Late August means the dahlias are going full tilt — one peach one the size of a dinner plate, another wine-dark ball with every petal curled into a little cup. The stream runs down the middle of it all and drops over a stone wall into a pool, where the azalea maze sits out in the water so you can look at it from every angle but never walk it.

Up on the terraces there's a Miró and a Calder and, past a red steel tangle at the edge, the whole haze of the city running back to the San Gabriels.