DAYS 10/11 LOS ANGELES

Flight to Los Angeles. SoFi Stadium. Los Angeles Downtown. Walt Disney Concert Hall. LA Central Library. The Well of the Scribes.

We had an early departure for our flight to Los Angeles. The Green and Gold Army contingent was large enough to require three chartered Boeing 737s. I was fortunate to have a window seat and, with clear skies throughout the journey, enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the landscape below.

The scenery revealed a remarkable transition. The rugged mountains of the Cascade Range gradually gave way to the arid expanse of the Modoc Plateau before opening onto the vast California Central Valley. From the air, Shasta Lake, Lake Oroville and the San Luis Reservoir stood out as enormous inland seas, capturing the melting snow from the Sierra Nevada and distributing it through an immense network of canals. Constructed over several decades, from the New Deal through to the 1960s, these engineering projects transformed what had once been an arid valley into one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. From above, the irrigated landscape formed a striking patchwork of green and gold.

As we approached Los Angeles, we flew directly over SoFi Stadium. It was an extraordinary sight. The futuristic structure, with its sweeping curved canopy covered by a translucent perforated skin, seemed almost to float above the surrounding suburbs. Because it sits beneath the flight path of one of the world’s busiest airports, the playing field is sunk well below ground level, giving the stadium an unusually low profile that resembles a giant wave emerging from the landscape.

SoFi is short for Social Finance, an online personal finance and financial technology company that secured the naming rights until 2040. The stadium itself was privately financed and built by E. Stanley Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams. Even before arriving in the city, it was impossible not to notice the scale of private investment that had shaped so much of modern Los Angeles.

We arrived at LAX and transferred to our hotel in Long Beach. After a long day of travel, it was good simply to check in and enjoy a quiet stroll to a marina-side restaurant for dinner before turning in for the night. Tomorrow was a free day. After the disappointment of Australia’s loss to the United States, it was welcome to have a football-free day. I decided to use the opportunity to explore a side of Los Angeles that I had never seen before.

On an earlier family holiday to North America, we had visited the Los Angeles that my wife and daughters and most Australians know through films, television and celebrity culture. We stayed in West Hollywood and dutifully visited Hollywood Boulevard, the Walk of Fame, Rodeo Drive and Orange County. Although my family enjoyed it, I found very little that appealed to me personally. In many respects Los Angeles seemed exactly as popular culture had portrayed it.

I had a different concept of travel. For many years I would spend months preparing for overseas trips. I bought travel guides, read history books, studied maps and carefully chose accommodation based on the things my wife and I most enjoyed-history, culture, art and food. We rarely stayed fewer than three nights in any city, ensuring that every stop gave us at least two full days to explore rather than becoming a relentless sequence of arrivals one day and departures the next.

We went with what my family jokingly called “the library”: a carry-on bag filled with guidebooks and history books, heavily highlighted and marked with notes. By the time we arrived at our destination I usually had a good understanding of its history and culture, enough to explain the significance of what we saw to our young daughters. As they grew older, I would ask each of them to research one of the places we planned to visit and become our guide for the day. I was delighted by the enthusiasm with which they embraced the challenge, and I think it helped lay the foundations for their lifelong love of learning.

It was a time-intensive approach and required hours of reading simply to discover which places might be worth visiting.

More recently, however, I have increasingly used artificial intelligence to assist with travel planning. I ask it to consider my wife and my interests, our age and the length of our stay before recommending accommodation, itineraries and restaurants. I quickly discovered that it saved an enormous amount of time, and in most cases its recommendations proved remarkably good.

But I also realised there was a hidden cost.

In relying on AI to produce the finished itinerary, I was missing the passive learning that came from reading widely across many different sources. During that process I would often stumble across something entirely unexpected-a historical anecdote, a forgotten building or an obscure museum-that ultimately became one of the highlights of the trip. AI efficiently delivered the destination, but it sometimes bypassed the intellectual journey that made travel so rewarding.

You don’t get something for nothing.

With an AI-generated itinerary for the day ahead, we left our hotel in Long Beach and walked five minutes to the Metro station. The forty-minute journey into downtown Los Angeles was clean, comfortable and surprisingly inexpensive, costing only US$1.75 each way—considerably cheaper than London’s Underground.

Being a Monday morning, I had expected the train to be crowded with commuters travelling into the city. Instead, it was only about half full. As the journey progressed, it seemed that many passengers were travelling between the industrial suburbs that stretch from Long Beach towards downtown rather than commuting into the central business district itself.

We left the train at Grand Avenue Arts/Bunker Hill Station, intending to spend the morning exploring the city’s museums and galleries.

Our first destination was the Museum of Contemporary Art.

It was closed.

Of course. Monday is the day that many museums close no matter what country they are in. So was the Walt Disney Concert Hall. And just about every other museum and art gallery I had planned to visit. I had forgotten to tell the AI that today was Monday. With that rather important piece of information added, it quickly suggested an alternative walking tour of downtown Los Angeles, focusing on the city’s architecture.

Our revised itinerary began with a walk around the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Designed by Frank Gehry, the building is one of the architectural icons of modern Los Angeles. Commissioned by Lillian Disney in 1987 as a memorial to her late husband, Walt, it was intended both as a gift to the city and as a lasting contribution to its cultural life. Its sweeping stainless-steel curves seem almost to defy geometry, reflecting the ever-changing Californian light and giving the impression that the building is in constant motion.

Many of the design elements that later became synonymous with Gehry’s work, including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, are already evident here. Yet one aspect of the original brief appealed to me more than the architecture itself. Gehry wanted the building to engage with the city, creating public spaces that people could enjoy whether or not they were attending a concert. As we wandered around the exterior we discovered exactly that.

A staircase led us to an elevated garden nearly twelve metres above the busy streets below. Hidden from the traffic, it was an oasis of tranquility. Trees and flowering garden beds softened the gleaming steel of the concert hall, while sculptures were thoughtfully placed among winding paths and quiet seating areas. Despite being in the heart of one of the world’s largest cities, there were only two or three other people enjoying the space.

It was one of those unexpected moments that make travel so rewarding. Without planning it, without reading about it beforehand, and certainly without it appearing on my original itinerary, we had stumbled across a place of extraordinary beauty. Sometimes the most memorable travel experiences are not the ones you carefully plan, but the ones that find you instead.

As often happens in places like this, the setting invited conversation. One of the few other visitors was a woman enjoying her regular morning exercise. We remarked how fortunate she was to have such a peaceful place to walk while living in such a busy city. She smiled and agreed before pointing out one feature of the garden that I had completely overlooked.

An outdoor amphitheatre had been built as part of the complex so that children could be introduced to music in an informal setting, free from the perceived grandeur and intimidation of a traditional concert hall. It was another reminder that the building had been conceived not simply as a performance venue but as part of the city’s public life.

She smiled as she explained that the concentric concrete tiers surrounding the amphitheatre happened to be almost identical in height to the steps of Machu Picchu. Before recently travelling to Peru, she had used them to train for the climb to the ancient Inca citadel. She told us she was a retired geologist. Her husband’s career had taken them to postings in several parts of the world, but rather than simply accompanying him, she had built her own professional career wherever they lived. She spoke enthusiastically about the countries they had called home and the geological landscapes she had been fortunate enough to study and map.

It was one of those chance conversations that travellers remember long after they have forgotten the names of museums or monuments. We had met because two strangers happened to pause in a beautiful place, and within a few minutes we were exchanging stories about music, travel, careers, family and South America.

Our next destination was the Los Angeles Central Library. From the outside it is an imposing building, but its true significance lies not simply in its architecture, but in what it represents. The library is a monument to an America that believed an educated citizenry was fundamental to a healthy democracy.

Its story begins in 1921, when the citizens of Los Angeles voted overwhelmingly to approve a $2 million municipal bond issue to finance a new central library and an expanded network of branch libraries across the city. The bonds were purchased by the citizens themselves. It was a tangible expression of civic responsibility and an acknowledgement that public education, knowledge and culture were investments in the future rather than costs to be minimized and the returns monetized. the threshold year separating the boundless optimism of the young counties aspirations from the grim contradictions of capitalism.

Completed in 1926, only three years before the Great Depression; the threshold event separating the boundless optimism of the young country’s aspirations from the grim contradictions of capitalism.

The building reflected the optimism of a young nation that believed progress could be achieved through public institutions created for the benefit of everyone. The library was conceived first and foremost as a democratic institution. Rich or poor, immigrant or locally born, adult or child, anyone could enter free of charge. People could borrow books, study, learn English, acquire new skills or simply spend a quiet afternoon reading. Knowledge was not regarded as a privilege but as a public good.

That philosophy was reflected in the architecture. Rather than simply reproducing the classical styles of Europe, architect Bertram Goodhue created something distinctly American. Egyptian, Byzantine, Spanish and Art Deco influences were blended into a building that looked simultaneously ancient and modern, expressing confidence that the United States could create its own cultural identity while drawing upon the accumulated wisdom of earlier civilizations.

The ideals extended beyond the walls of the library itself. Outside lay the beautifully landscaped West Garden, with reflecting pools, fountains and sculptures designed to encourage quiet contemplation. At its centre stood one of the library’s most remarkable artistic works: the Well of the Scribes. Before visitors even entered the building, they encountered a bronze monument celebrating the written word itself. Around the circular relief were figures representing writers, philosophers and scholars whose ideas had shaped human civilization. The message was unmistakable. Knowledge deserved to be celebrated.

Standing in the library almost a century later, it was difficult not to admire the ambition of that vision. Yet the story took an unexpected turn. By the 1960s, Los Angeles had become increasingly shaped by the automobile. Plans were approved to remove the West Garden and replace it with a parking lot. Despite determined protests - including architect Robert Alexander famously chaining himself to a boulder in the garden - the fountains, landscaping and the Well of the Scribes were demolished.

The sculpture itself simply disappeared. It is difficult to imagine a more symbolic loss. A monument to learning had been sacrificed to create space for cars. I only discovered this history after noticing part of the Well of the Scribes displayed outside the library’s Rare Books Department.

For almost fifty years the sculpture was thought to have been lost forever. Then, in 2019, an antique dealer in Arizona read an article about the missing artwork and realised that a bronze sculpture he had purchased several years earlier for just US$500 matched its description. After experts confirmed its identity, it was returned to the library where it is once again on public display.

As I stood looking at it, I found myself reflecting on the journey that had brought us here.

Earlier that morning we had flown over the immense reservoirs and irrigation systems that transformed California’s dry interior into one of the world’s great agricultural regions. Those projects had required governments to think in terms of nation building rather than election cycles and their citizens willing to invest collectively in the future. Now I was standing inside another monument born of the same philosophy.

The Los Angeles Central Library had been conceived during what historians call the Progressive Era, a period when many Americans believed democracy depended upon educated citizens and that governments had a responsibility to provide institutions that promoted knowledge, opportunity and civic life. Voters willingly taxed themselves to build libraries, schools, parks, reservoirs and other public works because they believed such investments created not only greater prosperity but a stronger society.

Walt Disney Concert Hall was built by philanthropic donation by the wealthy elite. By the 1990s, the Progressive Era ideals had given way to a later American tradition in which transformational civic projects are realized through partnerships between government and major philanthropists. Instead of taxpayers funding cultural monuments, wealthy individuals increasingly became patrons of the arts. And although some seating is allocated for cheaper seating, most of the better seating at $300-$500 is unaffordable to most Americans.

SoFi stadium houses two NFL teams, privately owned businesses whose massive cost structure prevents ordinary families from attending games at the stadium. All of it reinforces the impression that many people share that the US is moving towards a society where the dividends of progress are not equally shared.

As we left the library, I thought once more about the Well of the Scribes. For half a century it had been regarded as lost. Yet against all expectations, it had found its way home. Perhaps there is something quietly hopeful in that story. Ideas, like monuments, can disappear from view for a time without being lost forever. Sometimes they simply wait to be rediscovered by another generation that comes to recognize their value once again.

History doesn’t repeat, but perhaps it can rhyme.