We went to The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, CA. The Villa itself is incredible, it was built in the same style as the art it houses (mostly ancient Greek and Roman pieces).

lol, Are we old enough to be married? We still act like children!

Us in front of the fountain in the gardens.

That afternoon, we drove over to the Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey and checked in. The staff there was really friendly and excellent. They saw our note that we were celebrating our first anniversary, so gave us complimentary champagne:

and strawberries:

View from our room:

After we dropped our stuff off in our room, we rented bikes from the concierge and took a ride along Venice Beach:

The next day we went to The Grove and The Farmer’s Market:

tee hee

Afterwards, we tried to get in to see The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien but we didn’t get in. It’s really unfortunate that we didn’t, now that he’s off the show. Instead, we went to LA Live to look at the new Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles (it wasn’t open yet, so we couldn’t go inside) and saw Avatar and went to a really nice dinner at Sur using a coupon from Groupon:

The next day we went to the Griffith Observatory:

You may remember it from movies and tv.

Awesome Periodic Table exhibit:

Went to the plane-arium and saw a show:

Oh hey, Hollywood sign!

The next day we drove to Marana, AZ and checked into our hotel:

They upgraded us to Club Level (!! a room with unlimited free drinks and food) and more champagne and strawberries were waiting in our hotel room:

View from our balcony:

The next day we went down to the pools. Mike went down the water slide:

It was kinda cool outside so I didn’t go in the pool.

Mike used to work with the guy that is now head chef of the restaurant CORE, he made us a really nice meal that night (that he didn’t comp it ended up being like $100, thanks for nothing, man! Oh well, it was still really nice of him, and tasty):

The next day we had to drive home :

It was an incredibly long drive:

The next day was our actual anniversary, we stayed in and celebrated All in all, a great way to end the first year!