San Diego: Balboa Park
Posted August 22nd, 2008 by Meg
After lunch at the Hash House A Go Go, we walked around San Diego’s Balboa Park looking for adventure. (I am amazed and grateful that I was still able to be move my legs after the half marathon). We found a map and wandered into the Botanical Building, also known as the lath palace. It is one of the largest wooden lath structures in the world, built in 1915 for the Panama-California Exposition. A lath is thin, narrow strip of some straight-grained wood or other material and a lattice is the criss-cross arrangements of these strips. Basically, this place looked like a big, beautiful wooden bird cage to me. In front of the building there are two reflecting ponds that contain exotic lilies and lotus, goldfish, and Japanese koi.
During WW1, Balboa Park became a Naval Training Station, and the lagoons were converted into swimming pools so sailors could learn to swim. After the war, the swimming pools were reverted back into ponds. Again during WW2, the ponds were used as swimming pools, but this time they were being used by the Naval Hospital that had taken over the grounds. When the war ended, it reverted once again back to being ponds. People come from all over the world to take pictures of the ponds and the Building (note: the picture of people taking pictures).
Inside the building there is a seasonal floral display and more than 2,100 permanent plants such as cycads, ferns, orchids, other tropical plants, and palms. I am such a sucker for flowers and love taking pictures of them. I probably took upwards of one hundred pictures. I definitely looked like the dork in the group, but I am okay with that. I was impressed at their wide variety of flowers. I found the Botanical Building to have a wider variety flowers and plants than the Huntington Gardens in Los Angeles, but I could be wrong. I do know that I would recommend stopping by Balboa Park to take a peek at this place. Hopefully whenever I am in San Diego next I will have time to check out the many other gardens Balboa Park offers. I would love to see the 1935 (Old) Cactus Garden, Japanese Friendship Garden, Palm Canyon, and the Zoro Garden (which was once a nudist colony, but now is a butterfly garden).
After the plants, we walked around a little more and stumbled upon Spreckels Organ Pavilion. This organ is special because it is one of the world’s largest outdoor pipe organs. Since 1917, San Diego has had a civic organist, who performs free weekly Sunday concerts. We fortunately caught the end of one of these beautiful performances. The organ contains 4,530 pipes ranging in length from the size of a pencil to 32 feet; big! After the Organ Pavilion, my friend and I headed back to Los Angeles. All and all, the trip to San Diego was awesome. It is a friendly and beautiful city that I wish to return to again soon someday.
