{"id":6988,"date":"2018-01-04T09:01:35","date_gmt":"2018-01-04T14:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6988"},"modified":"2018-01-17T08:15:14","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T13:15:14","slug":"la-outdoor-attractions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6988","title":{"rendered":"LA — Outdoor Attractions"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a January day when the winter wind\u2019s noise is nearly constant, new snow is sheeting around the corner of the house, and the temperature forecast for Saturday is minus<\/em> 5, I happily return to memories of the 90-degree days we enjoyed in Los Angeles just six weeks ago. In addition to a tour of the landscape garden at the Getty (threatened by the wildfires soon afterward), we visited these three major outdoor attractions.<\/p>\n

The Arboretum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Queen Anne Cottage – photo: Vicki Weisfeld<\/p><\/div>\n

We walked the 127-acre Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Garden<\/a> on Thanksgiving Day, when not much else was open. Griffith Park (the largest urban municipal park in the United States), which has a zoo and an observatory just seemed too much to deal with. It probably would have been a better choice. There\u2019s not much to the Arboretum, located west of the city. It contains large areas planted with species from Australia and Africa, small herb and rose gardens, a couple of greenhouses, and, on Thanksgiving Day, not much was going on. Gift shop was closed.<\/p>\n

The most attractive feature was the Queen Anne Cottage<\/a> and coach barn. The Victorian-era cottage is set on a lake and extensively restored. Charming, but closed that day. We finally found a place to get a cold drink and sat on a terrace surrounded by greenery and screaming peacocks. Kids seemed to enjoy running on the expansive lawns. Under other circumstances, this could be a gem, but wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The Huntington<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Huntington – photo: Vicki Weisfeld<\/p><\/div>\n

On another day\u2014when, thank goodness, the marvelous gift shop and restaurants were open\u2014we visited The Huntington<\/a>. It\u2019s near the Arboretum, but a world away in terms of interest. The Huntington combines a library, art collection, and botanical garden on the former ranch of early California railroad and real estate magnate Henry E. Huntington. Huntington began collecting rare books, art, and the specimens for botanical gardens during his lifetime.<\/p>\n

The library is one of the world\u2019s leading independent research libraries and has an extraordinary collection of some seven million manuscripts, 430,000 rare books, and more. Starting with The Gutenberg Bible, it has originals of The Canterbury Tales<\/em>, folio editions of Shakespeare\u2019s plays, letters from the hands of the Founding Fathers, and one of the world\u2019s leading collections related to the history of science. The exhibits of these materials are interesting and well planned. (We did not tour the art museum, home to such world-famous works as Thomas Gainsborough\u2019s \u201cBlue Boy\u201d and Sir Thomas Lawrence\u2019s \u201cPinkie.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The enticing grounds are laid out with many noteworthy features, including the Chinese Garden of Flowing Fragrance, and an elaborate, multi-level Japanese garden that displays an extensive bonsai collection. We enjoyed the rose and herb gardens, and the Shakespeare garden. The heat kept us out of several other areas (the desert garden, the Australian garden), but left us with a reason to return.<\/p>\n

LaBrea Tar Pits<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Sabre-toothed cat–OK, not a real one–photo: Vicki Weisfeld<\/p><\/div>\n

Unexpectedly (to me), the LaBrea Tar Pits<\/a> are on Wilshire Boulevard, smack in the middle of the city. The Page Museum there includes some astonishing and hands-on displays about the animals whose bones have been found in the pools of bubbling black gunk. Kids love it, and the displays are intriguing for adults too. Take a docent-led tour of the outdoor tar pit area and active dig-sites in order to get the most out of your visit. You will have questions, and the guide we had was able to answer those of visitors ages seven to seventy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a January day when the winter wind\u2019s noise is nearly constant, new snow is sheeting around the corner of the house, and the temperature forecast for Saturday is minus 5, I happily return to memories of the 90-degree days … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"LA -- Outdoor Attractions -- Gardens, tar pits, and much more. That 90-degree temperature sounds great right about now!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[682,266,104,78],"tags":[307,99],"class_list":["post-6988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fine-arts","category-history","category-the-morgue","category-travel","tag-los-angeles","tag-urban-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1OI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6992,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6988\/revisions\/6992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}