A Crash Course in UCLA’s Sights

As eager as I was to get out of college, who’d have thought that three decades later I’d want to go back?

UCLA isn’t my alma mater. Although I’ve been on the campus many times and even taken an extension class, I still had missed plenty, including the school’s Japanese garden, a concert in Royce Hall and the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

When I learned about the UCLA Guest House on campus, with rooms available year-round to the public, I planned an overnight trip with my husband, Geoffrey.

Our back-to-college weekend started on a Friday afternoon when we drove to the Hannah Carter Japanese Garden, open for free, self-guided one-hour tours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays (reservation only). This two-acre meditation garden isn’t on the campus but is tucked among multimillion-dollar houses on Bellagio Road in Bel-Air.

The sound of bubbling, tumbling water greeted us as we stepped from the car. Through the gable-roofed gateway we caught our first sight of a haven of grace and tranquillity.

Japanese maples, black bamboo, pines, azaleas and rhododendrons covered the hillside, accented with benches, stone statues, a teahouse and a shrine. Paths serpentined around a koi pond and up the slope.

Gordon Guiberson and his wife, Verabelle, used to own this land. They hired two landscape designers from Tokyo and Kyoto to build the garden in 1959 on what had been a steep, weed-choked hill. Edward W. Carter, then chairman of the Regents of the University of California, bought the property and donated it to UCLA in 1965. Carter’s widow, Hannah, still lives in the house adjacent to the garden.

After an hour, we wound our way down Sunset Boulevard to UCLA. The guest house is open to anyone having some affiliation with, or business at, the university. We qualified because we were attending a performance on campus, but mostly it attracts alumni, parents and visiting lecturers.

Tidy if a bit sterile, the building felt like any medium-priced chain hotel. Our room was just large enough to accommodate the queen bed, dresser and night stands. (Some come with a kitchenette or space for a rollaway, but ours did not.) Our room was adequate, but I thought the price was a little steep considering the small size and ambience.

For dinner, we opted for Moustache Cafe, a cozy French bistro on Glendon Avenue, a 20-minute walk away in Westwood.

For our main course, we settled on omelets with ham, cheese and tomato. The accompanying shoestring potatoes were among the skinniest and crispiest I’ve had.

Feeling pleasantly full, we wound our way back through campus to Royce Hall. The grand brick building, constructed in 1929, was patterned by architect David Allison after the church of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, Italy.

Geoffrey and I rarely get to attend live shows, so seeing the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra perform at Royce Hall was a treat. As the orchestra accompanied piano, cello, flute and horn soloists in works by Hindemith, Mozart and Strauss, we settled into our seats.

When the concert ended, others headed toward parking garages for the drive home. We strolled a few blocks to our room for the night.

The next morning, leaving Geoffrey happily snoring, I took off to investigate the campus.

As I walked, a few drama students were rehearsing their lines in the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, a grassy area fronting the art department. The 70 works include pieces by Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore and Alexander Calder.

I moved on to the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden, across from the health sciences complex. Paths ramble near a trickling stream surrounded by 4,000 rare and native plant species.

When I got back to the guest house, Geoffrey had helped himself to the free continental breakfast and was plopped in an easy chair in the lounge reading the paper. After we packed up and checked out, we walked over to Westwood Plaza and the adjacent Ackerman union, the expanded student center whose new wing opened in April 1997.

On the ground floor of Ackerman, stores sold clothes, books and enough UCLA-logoed goodies to outfit a small country.

But it was the second floor that really surprised us. There we found a range of dining choices that we wouldn’t have dreamed of in my day: Mexican, Italian, Chinese, burgers, salad bar and gourmet coffee. It was like a mall food court. As Geoffrey wolfed down a lobster burrito from Rubio’s Baja Grill, I thought about the campus eateries when I was in college, where the standard fare was 3-ounce, cooked-to-shrivel hamburgers, greasy french fries and dreadful java.

We walked over to the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, our last stop. The museum, where admission is free, collects and preserves art primarily from Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America.

The exhibits were eclectic. A multimedia African music exhibit was next door to a room full of “Muffler Men,” sculptures constructed from car mufflers by Ernesto Ceyvantas, Octavio Franco and Victor Lopez. A dazzling display of 16th to 19th century silver pieces--251 items, from model ships to beer steins--was next to an exhibit of Howard L. Bingham’s photos of the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman world heavyweight championship fight in Zaire, the “Rumble in the Jungle.”

As we strolled back to our car, I mused about my brief trip back to college, and how much campus culture had changed--the clothes, the hairdos, the body piercings.

But then there were the girls and guys draped over lecture hall steps. They studied, ate, sipped coffee. They flirted and gossiped, just as we did. And I realized that some things never change.

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Budget for Two

UCLA Guest House, one night: $91.00

Admission, L.A. Chamber Orchestra: 58.00

Dinner, Moustache Cafe: 59.00

Lunch, Rubio’s Baja Grill: 11.82

FINAL TAB: $219.82

UCLA Guest House, 330 Charles Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095; telephone (310) 825-2923, fax (310) 825-6108, Internet https://www.hotels.ucla.edu. UCLA Hannah Carter Japanese Garden, 10619 Bellagio Road, Los Angeles, CA 90077; tel. (310) 825-4574, fax (310) 267-2247, Internet https://www.japanesegarden.ucla.edu.