Golden Dragon Parade in Chinatown

This weekend Jason and I finally paid a visit to old Chinatown here in Los Angeles. This month is the celebration of Chinese New Year, the year of the Tiger. The Golden Dragon Parade was on Saturday, and we headed down. We got to enjoy lots of floats and dragons. Below are the gates that mark the entrance to Chinatown from downtown LA.

Here is a video of the fan dancers:


There were several types of dragons I saw. There were short dragons that consisted of two people, longer dragons that were many people covered by the dragon's head and body, and long dragons carried on poles. The video below shows the short dragons as well as the long dragon on poles:




We were exhausted but had a great time. But my day didn't end there. Jay headed home, while I met one of my workmates to see a performance of the Los Angeles Ballet. They performed three separate pieces by Balanchine, called Serenade, Kammermusik #2, and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto #2. The performance was at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA. We had a wonderful time, and thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

I hope you all had a fun weekend as well! Hopefully this week we will also find the time to post pictures from last weekend when we attended the Scottish Festival and Highland Games at the Queen Mary in Long Beach.

A rainy weekend in Solvang

This weekend was more rain here in Los Angeles. The winters here are incredibly mild, with temperatures rarely dipping below the 60s. It is however the only time it ever rains. So we decided to get away for a little trip to Santa Ynez Valley, where we visited one of our favorite spots, Solvang, CA. We arrived late Friday night and stayed at the Kronborg Inn and slept in till 9:30 the next morning (I remember when 9:30 was early...). We headed into town and had a light breakfast at one of the Danish bakeries, then visited a few of the stores. One of them was the Book Loft, a used bookstore that also houses the Hans Christian Anderson Museum. Here's Jay browsing for books, and a shot of the entrance to the museum:



We also popped into the Solvang Antique Center, which is full of some of the most beautiful (and expensive) pieces I've ever seen. We try to visit every time we go, just to drool over the unusual and rare furniture, jewelry, paintings, and other items. Afterwards we popped into the Mandolina tasting room to sample some of their lovely wines.

Solvang is full of little shops, most of which we've never even been in. It's also surrounded by wineries and beautiful scenery, also most of which we haven't visited yet! We often visit Gainey Vineyard and Curtis Winery, and we always stop at Bridlewood Winery. Normally we picnic on the beautiful grounds at Bridlewood, but because of the rain this time we headed to Buellton to have lunch at a place called Pea Soup Anderson's. Jay loved the split pea soup and sausages we had for lunch....

After our delicious lunch we headed to Bridlewood where we sampled wines and picked up several months worth of wine club shipments. Yay for wine club! Bridlewood is lovely, and here are a few shots of the tasting room and the grounds:


We then left Solvang and headed back to Los Angeles, but stopped along the way to take pictures and have dinner with our friend Linda in Ventura. Jay was taking a few pictures when we dropped the D300... oh sad day when the lens is broken! There was much lamenting over the accident. Lucky thing the Nikon repair center is close by!

The view of Santa Ynez Valley from Vista Point:


And the intrepid photographer just before the tragic accident: