One Stray Pea

There is more culture in this park than all of Cincinnati combined, I’m not kidding. Balboa Park is the nation’s largest urban park and could be described as a cultural mixture of various museums, botanical gardens and the San Diego Zoo. We chose to separate our trips to this cultural mecca into one day for gardens and museums and another day for the zoo. We began our enlightening journey in the Japanese Friendship Garden, and to put it mildly, they’d make more friends if there was a little more garden. However, it was only a $2 admission (yay! student discount). However, the Japanese tea shop & cafe’ next door made things a bit better in the form of Teriyaki chicken rice bowls. Ahh, sweet rice redemption! We were also able to enjoy a free organ concert until we decided it was too hot to sit in the sun.

We strolled over to the Museum of Photographic Arts, it was just as cool as it sounds (no sarcasm intended). We enjoyed some Ansel Adams nature photos, an Arthur Lavine exhibit featuring photos of all sorts of random/social scenes and Harry Callahan exhibit which featured mainly pictures of his naked wife Eleanor. Enough photos for me to become uncomfortable with all the nudity, it was a little out of hand, even Aaron said so. Overall, I think we were both impressed with the photography museum and it sparked a need for me to have photographs of my own. So when we ventured into the Spanish Art Village, I purchased a photo of Venice and a picture of the arches near the House of Hospitality in Balboa Park. When inspired, I am more than willing to support local, starving artists, even if they aren’t local to me.

I was also inspired to become a plant paparazzi. I’m not kidding, we entered the botanical gardens and I began taking picture after picture of flowers. This became a trend that continued throughout the remainder of our vacation. I leave you with foliage photo.

Filed under: Vacation on August 8th, 2007