Balboa Park, San Diego Day 4 - March 15

 Day 4 Balboa Park:

Friday morning and the sun's out and then by 8am it clouded up again???? We are going to try and see the Japanese Friendship Garden this morning.... if the sun stays out. It did and out the door we went at 9:30 am. On the way, we saw another cruise ship in the harbour so we knew it would be busy so tried to get there in line ASAP.

 Once parked it's a short walk to the gardens. We're 15th or so in line .... then WTH, 3 school buses of kids were let in ahead of us, so about 90 of the little monsters. We overheard the teacher telling them "not to steal anything from the gift shop". Wow ... who knew you have to say that on a middle school trip.

We ended up waiting for them to dispurse as the kids were told they only have one hour. They did move on and spread pretty quickly .... to all the food vendors. :)

Looking back at the entrance to the garden.

Topiary Garden

The path winds back and forth until you get to the bottom.

Blooming now are some rhododendrons and azaleas. The biggest draw is the cherry blossoms.

This Heron's sneeking up on the koi. He made a grab but the big koi never paid him any attention. The little ones scattered so he missed. We watched it for about 5 minutes.

Peek a Boo.

A bunch of the school kids were tasked with finding the "Budha". 

We spent about an hour or so wandering around taking pictures. This is a beautiful garden.

Once finished, we headed back up the winding path to the Visitor's Centre. We decided on El Prado Restaurant again for lunch, but it didn't open for another 15 minutes. We'd missed the Museum of Photgraphic Arts on Monday as it wasn't open, today it is. We decided to tour it first as it's in the same area as El Prado.

It really wasn't worth it if we'd to pay for it, fortunately we have the Explorer's Pass. The three pictures below are done by highschool students and are the only ones we liked. The others were way out there.

Lunch at El Prado is tasty as usual on their patio.

Inside the restaurant they display these really neet blown glass displays.

After lunch it's off to the Tinken Museum that was closed last Monday. While we were sitting down for lunch, Ray realized that his "F stop settings" on his camera for the second half of the gardens were wrong ... fortunately we got stamped so we could get back in and would do so after we finished the Tinken Museum. They have lots of original artwork from the 1700 to 1800's. They also do restoration work here.

This piece is currently being restored. See the white hole?

This is just a sampling of paintings. They also have a lot of religious paintings, which I opted not to photograph.

There are also a ton of people in here that we meandered around, alot of older kids, probably high school. Note to self ... don't go to Balboa on Fridays ...  kids have school trips. We never noticed them so much on the other days we visited the park.

Back to the Japanese Friendship Garden.... I walked down the path with Ray until I found a nice bench overlooking the garden and he continued on to retake his pictures. I gave him my phone as a backup as his sensors on his phone are screwed from the solar eclipse. lol 

Back in the car. Whew .... that was a lot of steps today, but wait ... Ray wants to go back to Inspiration Point and walk the Veterans Memorial Garden which will finish all that we wanted to see at Balboa Park. Over 9000 steps later we were finally done.

Veterans Memorial Garden:

At the end of our tours today, we've seen 12 museums and multiple gardens. We've only missed a few that we're not interested in or not open. We have SEEN most of Balboa Park. Onto our next adventure after a day or so of rest.