Descanso Gardens

On the Thursday of my parent's visit, we drove to La Canada (not like the country, there is a squiggly accent on top of the n) to visit the Descanso Gardens. The weather was great, sunny as usual, and the flowers and plants were amazing. I think that I would consider relocating to southern California permanently just so that I could have a garden all year long. This garden had 160 acres of flowers, including roses, lilacs, wildflowers and camelias.

Here is a picture of mom with mums.Ed had to check out the gourd crop. Although big none of them looked like a face. So I guess he wins.
The rose garden was in bloom and amazing. It was so beautiful that it made Jesse and I wish that we had put off the wedding and got married in this garden instead.



Recently Jesse brought to my attention that I may be portraying him in a negative light with respect to his grumpiness in many pictures. All I could say was that maybe he shouldn't look so grumpy when I take a picture. Hopefully from now on he'll remember that other people will most likely get to see the picture so he may just have to pretend to smile. To help dispel any perceptions of his constant bad mood though, I told him that I would make sure to post some pictures of him when he was smiling. I did find it odd that in order to smile, he had to be pushing me into a fountain.










Within the garden there was a Japanese tea house which was neat, especially all of the little bonzai trees.

Here come the Rents

Two days after Mandy and Kyle left for home, Ed and Scoots came to visit. For their first day in the LA area, I sent them on a guided city tour because I had to go to class and I knew Jesse wouldn't be a very fun tour guide. Since Jesse and I did a similar tour in April when we came for my interview, I thought that I could add some pictures of the highlights.
The first four picture were taken in Santa Monica at the pier. This may not have actually been part of the tour...I think we just went there on our own.

Next to me is a giant jade plant. I was impressed and I'm sure my dad would have been too.

Ok, the rest of the picture were taken on our city tour. We first stopped at Venice beach which had a very cool board walk (although it wasn't actually made out of wood) with a lot of interesting little shops.



These are some pictures of the canals near Venice beach. I don't remember exactly how much the little houses cost along the canal but they were ridiculously expensive.

We even got to see Jim Morrison.
Of course one of the stops on the tour was a view of the sign along Mulholland Drive. We were told that we were lucky because since it had rained the day before, most of the smog had dissipated and therefore the sign was visible.
This is a view of LA from Mulholland drive.
The tour also stopped at Rodeo Drive, but only for 15 minutes, which was just enough time to realize that I couldn't afford anything from any of the stores.

The hotel behind me is the Regent Beverly Wilshire which is best known for it's role in Pretty Woman.

Another key LA attraction is Hollywood Boulevard and the walk of fame. I personally found it very tacky with way too many tourists. Jesse agreed.




Grauman's Chinese Theater.
Our last stop of the tour was Olvera Street which is the oldest street in LA.
And that was about it. I thought the tour was a great way to see everything in a short amount of time because I doubt that I would go to most of the places for longer than the half hour that we were usually alloted.