Tina's B-Day

This year Tina wanted to celebrate her Birthday on a weekend getaway. I had fun planning a surprise weekend for her in LA. I took her to see Prince Caspian at Disney's El Capitan theater in Hollywood. It is right across the street from the Kodiak theater...where the Idol Finales are held. If you are ever in LA you should take the time to do this at least once. They have a live show before the movie and the theater is all decked with real props from the movie. They also have a gallery below the theater that you can visit after the movie where you can see up close a lot of the actual costumes and set pieces used in the filming. The great thing is that it is only about 5 bucks more than a regular movie theater. The first time we went was too see the third Pirates movie a few years ago. 

Well as fun as that was it was just a distraction to keep her from figuring out her birthday present. I surprised her the next night with tickets to see "Wicked" which is the broadway musical playing at the Pantage theater just down the street from the El Capitan theater. It was great...she didn't figure it out until we were parking across the street from the theater. It was a great show...I thought it was really funny. The story ties together all of the loose ends from the wizard of OZ. Did you ever wonder where the tin man, scarecrow, and cowardly lion came from? I didn't really but it was interesting to find out. We ended up renting some binoculars and I would highly recommend this to anyone. It was like watching the play in the front row in high-def. 

We also visited the Getty Museum just off the 405 in LA. The major draw to go was that it was free and Tina and I would probably never pay to get into an art museum. Turned out to be a great place. We saw some photo and art exhibits and even some really old beautifully illustrated bibles from the middle ages. After those 5 or 10 minutes we spent the remainder of our time outside enjoying the great LA weather. Sunny 65-70 degrees, almost no humidity...a nice California day. The landscaping was really creative and I guess soothing because well stretched out on the grass and took a nap. After a while we felt like bums so we wandered around the gardens and took these pictures. The place is really cool. Another fun place to visit if you are ever in town. They have lots of free activities for kids too.

see http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_Museum