Vacation at Home

For the Fourth of July, I flew home to visit my family. I've been looking for excuses to write another blog post, which is challenging (given that this is supposed to be about my semester in Paris and I am still in California), but the fun mini-vacation in my home town provides perfect material.

For starters, there is something unsettling about being a visitor to a place that used to be home. I mean, TALK about liminality!! Nostalgia, a sense of loss, and the excitement that comes with going on any vacation get jumbled up in a bizarre mix of happy-sad-homesick sprinkled with just a dash of I've-outgrown-this-place. Feelings of being torn between worlds? Absolutely. (for any newcomers to my blog, liminality is related to concepts of being stuck between 2 places. refer to first blog post for further clarification.)

My mom deserves high praise for planning this weekend in L.A., which went a little something like this:

(1) Dinner at the Athenaeum, a country club-type affair open to members of the Caltech community. For visitors to L.A., admittance to this particular building is barred, but wandering the Caltech campus is always a treat, especially when the purple Jacaranda trees are in bloom. Expect beautiful gardens, ornate buildings built in the Depression era, and the occasional group of young geeks.

(2) Shopping at the Glendale Galleria, with the newly added Americana just down the street. Slightly nicer than a typical American mall, the Galleria provides shopping for just about any budget. I favor the cheaper stores, but I still enjoy window shopping at places well above my means!


(3) A visit to the Huntington Gardens (and Art Museums) in San Marino. After looking at the beautiful old manuscript collection on display and tracking down the Paul Revere silver collection (which had moved from one building to another since my parents' last visit), we enjoyed Tea in the adorable Tea Room overlooking the Shakespeare Garden. For anyone out there who is not familiar with an English Tea, it involves much more than simply the beverage from which it takes it's name, serving as a small meal between lunch and dinner. I enjoyed itsy bitsy tuna and chicken salad sandwiches, a variety of cheese, fruits, salads, and cake for my sister's birthday, all taken from the buffet. We managed to snag our favorite table by the window, overlooking the above-mentioned Shakespeare Garden. This garden only features plants mentioned in a Shakespearean play or sonnet, and I took the first of the photos below on my iphone while we were enjoying dessert.

(4) Tour of Little Tokyo near Downtown L.A. with my sister and best friends from high school. We spent the day catching up and wandering aimlessly, but I did manage to buy a new cover for my iphone for the absurdly low price of $8 in the Fashion District. A friend haggled with the lady in charge of the "shop" (calling it a "booth" might be more appropriate) and got us a 25% discount. The Fashion District needs to be seen to be understood, but try to picture several square blocks of small booths, packed with a range of merchandise (prom dresses, sunglasses, kitchen ware, smoke shops, Children's toys) and drenched by the hot California sun. Good deals are a guarantee, but parking and public restrooms are not.


(5) The July 4th Fireworks Spectacular at the Hollywood Bowl. The Hollywood Bowl is an outdoor concert space nestled in the Hollywood hills that seats thousands of people. With the Hollywood sign just visible in the background, brown and green hills on all sides, and the L.A. Philharmonic performing as dusk settled over the city, this was a unique and amazing evening.


The concert concluded with John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" while almost-perfectly timed fireworks went off above the Bowl. A touch of humor was added to the majestic scene when two small boys seated right behind us began yelling "Yahh!! Fireworks!! LOOK- a red one!! A BLUE one!! WOOOAHHH!!"


If you take nothing else from this blog post, I hope you learn that it is possible to have an amazing weekend in L.A. without hitting up Beverly Hills, Venice Beach, or Sunset Boulevard. Being a traveler to L.A. can be intimidating (traffic, attractions located miles from your hotel, and an accurate sense that this place ought to be a desert and shouldn't host human life at all), but taking the path less traveled is by far the best way to go. And of course, it doesn't hurt to have a friend who knows the area! :)