The Huntington Botanical Gardens.

Hello all, this is Jared posting this one. I know I am not as eloquint and good talker in them fancy words as Jenny but I will try to do this one justice. So our main adventure for this week was a jaunt in north LA to San Marino to a sweet botanical garden/library/museum/art gallery called The Huntington. http://www.huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary.aspx?id=514&linkidentifier=id&itemid=514ibrary.aspx?id=514&linkidentifier=id&itemid=514

Jenny, being awesome that she is, found out about it online while trying to be proactive about doing cool things while we are here for the summer. This place has been around since 1920's and it covers more than 120 acres. You should go to their website because these photos and explanation don't do it justice.

They have an amazing childrens area, authentic Chinese water gardens and Japanese zen gardens with bonsai court (wedding fees are $100,000!)...seriously, check out the website, its all really cool.

There is a massive indoor rain forest including the largest and rare flower in the world, the Corpse Flower that blooms once in a dozen years, and the single 6ft flower last 2 days and smells of rotting corpses. Inside they have a high pressure fogging system to keep the humidity at like 1000%.

In the children's area there were so many things the kids love, like small water fountains, magnet shavings, mister garden and room to run and explore. Here is Jack trying to eat the water and did a decent job of it.

Then we went to the Chinese water gardens. Simply amazing. It was built by actual chinese artisans with all authentic inported materials. Hmmm, imported from China, I guess it was all bought locally then. While we were there we had lunch and Jack decided to pull his shoe off on the wrong side of the fence. Then the Koi tried to push it to shore and we eventually got it about 10 minutes later. Lily was very distraught, cried and made a scene involving everyone around us who then tried to help us fish it out.

Then onto the Japanese area with a Bamboo Forest and Bonsai courts. Eric will appreciate the trees. Lily loved the bamboo and was pretending to be a panda.

A really neat part about the place is the quiet, reverence and attitudes there. A lot of people were dressed up and classy and a lot of people were relaxing under trees, on benches reading books. The whole time we were there, we wished everyone was with us. Stoney, Mel, Eric and Hannah mostly. Hannah needs to look into this place and come out and visit.