Back at Echo Park...

...and some other stops around Los Angeles and the east end of Sunset Blvd...

When I last visited Echo Park, I was delighted to discover that the paddle boats have returned to the lake!  These are not the funky old boats I remember from years ago, but sleek new shiny "rubber duck" yellow!  They've made an instant hit, and the park is very busy on the weekends now...

Just east of Echo Park on Sunset Blvd. is a little gem of restaurant, Guisado's, that makes great little tacos of all kinds.  It seems to be a favorite lunchtime oasis for nearby downtown office workers...

It was great to have a late summer reunion at a favorite L.A. location, Olvera Street, with friends I sketched with in Barcelona--Shiho, Chris and John.  So much fun to talk about that fantastic experience, and get in a bit of sketching too.  Olvera Street is the oldest part of Los Angeles--I've loved it since I was a child...

Back home sketching...

The best way to come home was of
course to get out and sketch some more!  Here are a few around the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles...


A hazy summer afternoon on Los Feliz Blvd....


















Still in a traveling frame of mind, I visited the wonderful India Sweets & Spices store and vegetarian restaurant--a world of spices and other treats...

 Those Bollywood musicals are hypnotically addictive...















I love this place...their menu says they are the biggest Indian grocery store in Southern California...the beneficent face of Yogananda smiles from a picture behind the counter, and a grandmother sits and watches all that happens....

sketching my colorful lunch... 

More summer travels...to LACMA (sketching the monumental Rodin heads perched enigmatically on the staircase leaving the museum), and to the Getty Center...

A Last Look at Barcelona...

Stretching it out a bit, I suppose, so that the feeling of being there lasts a very long time!  What a truly amazing and beautiful city--I dreamed of visiting Barcelona for many years to see Antoni Gaudi's work, but discovered so much more.  And of course, so much more to return to see!

The most well-known of Gaudi's buildings is La Sagrada Familia, the great cathedral that has been a work in progress for 131 years, being entirely built from donations...
I was so fortunate to get a free ticket to the Sunday afternoon International Mass from my hotel--I came in expecting to sit in the back to sketch, but was instead kindly ushered up to the front!  This is an indescribably moving place--a church of nature unlike anything else...

Gaudi's Park Guell is an enchanted world...a place where I could spend many days.  Musicians are playing all over the park, which adds to its magic.  I sat for a long in the shade of the rocky colonnade listening to the hypnotic sound of a "hang", which looks and sounds a bit like a Caribbean steel drum...

Gaudi lived in the house at right from 1906 to 1926, on the left is one of the delightful "gingerbread" houses at the entrance to Park Guell, sketched from the outdoor cafe...

Gaudi's Casa Batllo, sketched as day turned into night, so its iridescent beauty became even more shadowy and mysterious...































                                           



The day after the Symposium, some of my fellow sketchers and I set off at a more relaxed pace to the Parc del Laberint d'Horta--the Labyrinth Park, a historical garden with a maze, palace and pavilions--lovely!  (Made me think a bit of a more exotic Huntington Gardens...)






















And a couple of quick evening sketches...a view at dusk from Montjuic of the city below and La Sagrada Familia, and the Moorish fortress on Montjuic lit up at night...