This past June, Tim started having every other Friday off with his work schedule, so we decided to start making an effort to do more interesting things on those off Fridays instead of staying home and watching TV or playing video games. A few weeks ago, we did a family trip to the Huntington Library since my siblings also happened to have the day off and my parents are perpetually on vacation (hehe). Despite having lived in Southern California my entire life, I’d never been to the Library! The Library was originally on a plot of land owned by Henry Huntington and his wife, Arabella Huntington, that they lived on in San Marino, CA. He was a railroad magnate, and both he and his wife were big collectors of art, which is now the basis for all the art collections featured at the Library.
We went early on Friday (it opens at 10 AM on Fridays), and parking was a breeze. Admission was $25/person or $21 with a student ID. On weekends, it is a few dollars more. There were a lot of summer school groups at the time and I was concerned when we were paying for admission, until I realized how HUGE the grounds of the Library were. It is actually comprised of multiple museums, the library itself, tons of gardens, and restaurants, so there is no issue with crowding or too many people.
We started by walking south on the main pathway and then curving left on a loop that began in the Desert Garden. It was AMAZING!! If you love succulents and cacti of various shapes and sizes, this is the place for you. There is an app for the Huntington that you can input numbers along the path of get some info (although cell reception is a little poor), or else there are lots of little mini signs that tell you what you’re looking at and where it came from.
It was really fun pretending to be “tourists” in California. There are so many things to do that we haven’t done before (or like my parents, hadn’t been to the Huntington Library in 40 years), and it was nice to spend the day with my family. The last time we did a family vacation was over 10 years ago on the East Coast, and this was a good time!
We wandered through the Desert Garden and then made our way back to the main path to check out the Lily Ponds. There weren’t that many flowers, but the lotuses that were there were really pretty!
We left the Lily Ponds, and then kept walking through the Jungle Garden and Subtropical Garden until we reached the Japanese Garden. I think the Japanese Garden and the Chinese Gardens were my most favorite part of the entire trip! The bamboo was really tall, and there were these winding elevated wooden pathways through the forest until it reached a bonsai garden, and then past that, a little bridge by a waterfall, and then finally, a replica house of a traditional Japanese house.
After we strolled through the Japanese Garden, we continued on the high path overlooking this little ravine area that had tons more plants and grassy areas with a bridge crossing the stream.
The Chinese Garden was less foresty and more about interesting structures over a pond. There was a restaurant within the garden that had dumplings and noodles and had our mouths watering. The seating area was in the glass and wood pagoda-style house that was quite aesthetically pleasing too!
After we walked through the Chinese Garden, we came upon the Conservatory. This is where the Corpse Flower lives! Inside the Conservatory, it was super warm and humid–maybe around 88 degrees Fahrenheit and about 97% humidity. The Conservatory also has separate rooms so you can feel what it is like to be in a rainforest, a cloud forest, and a carnivorous plant bog.
They have multiple Corpse Flower buds that were growing (the biggest one was growing almost 6 inches DAILY!), but nothing had bloomed yet. When it blooms, it can be as tall as 8 feet high and emits this smell of rotting meat. Too bad we didn’t get to sniff it! Hehe.
At this point, everyone was getting really hungry, and we had plans to see the Gamble House as well, but it was getting too late in the day, so we decided to just finish the other museums and see the Gamble House on another day.
We walked over to the American Art Gallery directly across the lawn from the Conservatory, and it ended up being a sizeable museum for what seem quite small on the outside. Something to note is that water bottles of any kind are not allowed in any of the museums (so if it doesn’t fit in your bag, keep that in mind because they make you leave it at the entrance if they see you holding it).
I actually didn’t take that many pictures in this museum, but it did have an interesting room of American Arts and Crafts-style wooden furniture and home decor made by the Greene brothers, two very popular architects that made their mark in Pasadena from the early 1900s to the 1950s.
Next stop was the mansion, which is the Huntington Art Gallery, where most of the European art is held. This is the actual mansion that the Huntingtons lived in, so it has a library that was Henry Huntington’s original office, as well as dining rooms, living rooms, and salons. The big attraction here is the restoration of the artwork, Blue Boy, by Thomas Gainsbourough. It is currently being restored due to damage from age, and guests of the Library are able to watch an artist do the restoration live. It was a fun thing to tour a mansion from the Gilded Age, especially if you are into that era, and it was very reminiscent of mansions in Europe, and the influence is unmistakable.
The final stop of our trip was the actual Huntington Library. When you walk in, the first thing you can see is the Exhibition Hall. It has a little bit of everything on display for you just to get a taste of what the library has to offer, ranging from all periods of time and eras with all types of media. The big things to offer are a Gutenberg Bible, an original Chaucer story from the Canterbury Tales, and an original copy of Shakespeare texts.
One exhibit I found particularly fascinating was a history of maps of the world, showing maps from the early 1600s when men were just beginning to navigate the globe. It was especially interesting because as decades passed, you could see the maps developing from a mysterious blob of the Americas to more and more details that eventually became something recognizable to today’s maps.
Janejira Thai Bistro
After we finished in the Library, we ended up going to get some dinner in downtown Pasadena at Janejira Thai Bistro. Our original plan was to go to Nine & Nine Thai Kitchen next door, but actually they didn’t have much space to seat a group of 6 since it was lunchtime on a Friday, so we went a little down the block. The food there was pretty good as far as Thai food goes! The lunch specials were really hearty for a decent price (I didn’t even take pictures because everyone dug in before I could!), and the Thai tea was delicious. After lunch, we split up and that was the end of our first “Tourist LA” day.
Until next time!
– Sara