The Past Reflected in the Future

On Good Friday, Jeff had a holiday from work. So we decided to have a family day. This year we don't have season passes to any of the local theme parks, we are touring Los Angeles. So after spending the morning at the temple, we headed downtown to go on tour. We started at Olvera St. This is where the first residence in the Los Angeles area was established. Today it is more of a Latino shopping mall filled with stalls full of misc items. It reminded me of the marketplace in Mexico.From there we headed towards the City Hall Building. Originally on of the tallest building in LA, it is about 100 years old. Above is a picture of the city hall reflected in the mirrored police station building. We were able to go up to the observation deck for a lovely view of the city. We could see for miles..if there weren't any buildings in the way. One of the standout buildings was the Disney Concert Hall. It's wavy steel structure was really bright in the sun! From there we toured several of the older buildings in the city. We went in the lobby of the LA Times and read all the headlines from the past 100 years. We visited the Bradbury building (pictured left). It's lobby was truly lovely. We went in several other historical buildings that were exquisitely decorated. We also saw the first movie theatre, and went through the local market. By that time, we had travelled several blocks and were nearing the skyscrapers of Downtown. The Bonaventure Hotel grabbed our interest, so we headed there next. We rode in the external glass elevators on each of the four circular towers, giving us another view of the city from above. We enjoyed counting all of the helipads on the buildings. For a little variety, and to save our feet, we rode the subway back to Union Station. We were a little worn out by then. It was a great day touring downtown LA. We ended the day by attending the BYU UCLA volleyball game. It was full of drama as they went to a five game match. We enjoyed cheering for the visiting team along with at least a quarter of the other attendees.