Saturday, July 19, 2008

SoCal Day 7

So I've vowed to myself that this is going to be a short post. Although I think I'll probably break my own promise. I'm just not very good at being concise in this type of writing, especially when I just pour out whatever's going on in my head. But anyway, about my day.
Today our family visited the Huntington Gardens, Art Gallery, and Library. It wasn't all too far away from our hotel, just located in San Marino. The place was gorgeous. It's one of the top ten things to see for a very good reason. One of the most amazing things about it is the sheer immensity of the estate. Combined with excellent quality, it makes the place almost unbelievable. The "Gardens" of the Huntington Gardens are immaculate; divided into categories, it makes it seem as if you are touring the world on foot. There are different gardens in areas like desert gardens, jungle gardens, Japanese gardens, palm gardens, and so forth. To imagine that one person owned all of this is honestly unfathomable. 
The art gallery was really pretty impressive too. I've been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and it's quite something to say that Huntington's European art collection was about on par with that of the Met. One of the most impressive portraits in his galleries was that of George Washington that's used on the dollar bill. It was just unreal knowing that famous painting was the original. I've seen many originals of famous paintings before, but this one seemed to have a more dramatic effect on me. I would have pictures of some of them, but I didn't get any that were good enough to publish. I did get plenty of nice snapshots of the gardens though; I'll post them in a separate post above.
As soon as we got done at Huntington, we headed straight for Angel Stadium. I can say I was definitely excited. Our seats for this game were much better than I've been in before. We were just two rows back in right field, just about where Manny hit his home run. Too bad it wasn't enough... I was extremely disappointed in the Red Sox's showing tonight. It would have been awesome to see them win. I honestly wouldn't have minded seeing them lose a close one, but seeing them get taken to the woodshed like this was kinda awful. I wish they would have played well enough that I could have more easily held my head up high as we walked out of the stadium. It would have been nice; maybe some of the jeers would have lessened. I must say the highlight of the evening at the park was batting practice when Ben scored Manny's home run ball. I was pretty stinkin' psyched. But anyway, that's about it. Those of you who saw the game can probably guess why this post's tone is a bit more somber than normal. Tomorrow we head home... I'm not exactly looking forward to being off vacation. I can't wait to be home, but the prospect of lifeguarding again isn't exactly cheery. But anyway, I think I'm going to try and sleep off these post game blues.

1 comment:

Bridget said...

Bummer about the game but score for Ben! That is so cool he got a ball.

Sounds like you guys have had a fabulous time. I love the reverence and respect that you can feel in museums. I am in complete awe because I have no artisitic ability whatsoever.

Don't get too vacationed out. You do need to come to the Oregon coast in a week!