My favorite place to go are gardens and parks. I like to go there to find calm from a busy week. Also, I like to learn about different plants and grab some inspiration for my own yard someday. Every year during the holiday season I remind my husband we have to go to the garden to enjoy the holiday lights. Forget going to the mall! I’m going to the garden. Plus don’t forget to reserve tickets as early as possible!
Anyways, here are a few gardens I’ve visited in the past. For this week I went through my WordPress media archives to find plenty of garden photos.
I have not gone to the Arcadia Arboretum in the daytime. I only went there a couple years ago for the holiday season where they transformed the place into a garden of lights. These are just a few of the photos I took that day. The original post was from a previous Lens-Artist challenge.
Another garden I visited during the holiday season. I love how the different colored lights are shining on the branches; the blue looks little magical but the gray branch with the green in the background looks little creepy. Here’s the original post with a few more photos from Descanso Garden. I’d like to return for the cherry blossom festival in fall.
Huntington Library is one of my favorite places to go. I’ve had a couple of posts featuring a picture or two — but that’s nothing, it deserves a solo post. Many years ago, I entertained the idea of having our wedding at the Huntington, but we did not have $100,000 for the venue fee. If you are wondering, the fee does NOT include food and beverage, photography, music and entertainment, flowers, rentals, tents, supplemental security, and cost of event planner or producer. I understand they are an estate first, not an event center.
When we were in Portland, we rented a bike to explore the city. We went far enough and ended up at this Japanese Garden. It was not in our itinerary, but it we thought “let’s check it out.” It’s a small garden but there’s lots to see!
Warning: This post is picture heavy but well worth it 🙂
The Japanese Garden at Portland may be small. It took us about an hour exploring the garden, but it was LUSH full of green plants and beauty. Seeing it in person was unreal and fairy-tale like.
Date: May 30th Neighborhood: All over Portland Difficulty: 2 out of 5 Weather: Misty Distance: About 12 miles
For a few dollars, you can rent a bike for a day to explore Portland. You can bike a few miles to get to the next neighborhood, drop it off at the nearest bike share pod, borrow again when you choose, and repeat.
I learned Portland is a fairly small city compared to Los Angeles — in fact smaller than San Fernando Valley. Portland has 145 square miles, Los Angeles has 503 square miles, and San Fernando Valley has 260 square miles — wow it takes up more than half of Los Angeles! Due to Portland’s fairly smaller size, its sights were more compact which makes it definitely more bikeable.
Also, it made me think I should bike a little bit more at home. If it’s within a 5 mile radius, I should bike there. I’ll let you know how that experiment goes.
After the Memorial Day ceremony at Willamette National Cemetary, we went to the other side of Portland to the zoo. Veterans get free admission that day. It’s a fairly small zoo (compared to San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park) — but it’s beautiful and full of lovely greenery.
Below are some of my favorite snaps of the zoo:
Otter is on the left and the seal is on the right.
Address:
4001 Southwest Canyon Road
Portland, OR 97221
Special Announcement and off-topic: I finished my FAFSA for grad school. When I attended the open house for the Masters Program last month, they suggested to finish the FAFSA before applying to the program. The idea was a little weird because when I was doing undergrad, I filled out a FAFSA after I got accepted to a university reporting. Maybe the school process is a little difference since this is a program is geared towards working professionals(?) who will continue to work during the academic year. Anyways to me, this is a big step. Before vacation, I was on the edge of burning out. What prevented me from really burning out was putting certain things aside such as doing my grad school stuff or instead of cooking dinner, I order food
Brace yourself, I’ll be binge-posting a few more things from our vacation. I think Blue Star Donuts deserves a post of its own. They’re delicious not-too-sweet brioche donuts and I am glad they have a spot in Venice Beach so I don’t need a plane ticket to go to Blue Star Donuts. I still think it is quite a trek from house. It would be even nicer if Blue Star Donuts opened up in the Valley — maybe in Sherman Oaks? It would be within my cycling radius ;-). Continue reading Blue Star Donuts in Portland
For many years I’ve been taking the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner to get from Van Nuys to San Diego and in between whether it was for fun or recreation. I love taking the train every chance I get to avoid driving in traffic. It’s relaxing and I get to place my focus on reading and other recreational things not related to sitting in traffic. I convinced my husband instead of renting a car from Portland to Seattle, to instead take the train. Gladly we did and just relaxed to enjoy the scenery, read books, and stayed entertained.
After going to the Memorial Day service, walking around the zoo, and racking up more than 19,000 steps on FitBit — my husband and I needed to eat something. It’s safe to say we burned our calories from Sunday night’s meal at Podnah’s.
Eat, Play, Live 