Part III: More So Cal

Here are some more photos from my parents' visit to Los Angeles. 

They split up the drive, to arrive the afternoon before our trip to the Getty.  I met up with them and we walked around the UCLA campus, and nearby. 

First stop was the UCLA Botanic Gardens, where the cherry tree was in bloom. 

I was sure I took a picture of the cherry tree. But it isn't in my photos. So I guess maybe it was Mom who took a picture of the cherry tree? It seemed that maybe half the trees were native Australian trees. We have a similar climate in Melbourne to that of Los Angeles. Their botanic garden was full of Australian gum trees, Australian fig trees, and even a bunya bunya pine, which grows massive seed-pods every few years. In the Melbourne Botanic gardens, when the bunya bunya is seeding, they rope off a huge region around the pines, and eventually send people to safely cut down the bowling-ball sized heavy cones so they don't kill any visitors. Do you think UCLA takes these precautions? Or maybe their bunya bunya doesn't seed?

Anyway, I was going to insert here a photo of the bunya bunya in the UCLA Botanic Gardens, so you could see what the tree looks like, but it seems I didn't take a picture of that either. Sorry, internet. I suppose you can do your own image search for a bunya bunya at this point. I'll wait if you want to step away for that.

Ok. Near UCLA there is a little shopping area with movie theaters, restaurants, grocery stores, Target, etc. We walked around that next. The new Ghostbuster movie was showing, and the theater had the Ghostbuster car there on display! 

That's all I've got from Friday. My last post had the photos from Saturday. So that leaves Sunday. 

On Sunday, we drove to the Santa Monica Pier. 

Actually, that's not quite right. We drove to Santa Monica, and parked near a building labeled "Visitor Information" at my Mom's request. But the Visitor Information building was definitely closed. It was only about a 20 minute walk from there to the pier, said my phone map. My parents said they were up for it, so we walked. 

The walk looked like a nice smooth walk along the beach, on well marked trails under partly cloudy skies.

In reality we were getting sandblasted by wind while bikes and runners raced by. If we don't say anything about the reality the pictures look great.

The pier itself was even colder and windier. But we walked to the end.

 

 

We took some pictures of the ocean.

And then turned around and walked back. 

I decided to take my parents back to the road away from the beach for the walk back. Still, they are slow. Slower than me. It took us 30-40 minutes for what the phone map said would be about 20. I think I wore them out a little too much. 

And then I sent them off back onto the road for their long drive home. 

They did make it back home, in spite of the fact that we had walked a long long time. 

Thanks for coming, Mom and Dad.