The bosky fields of San Marino

Not a bad night considering – hotel is quiet which is great – hope it stays that way. Took me a fair while to get organised – something about out of your normal environment/routine – there is a real tendency to fiddle around – and there are a lot of crap TV stations to surf. Wandered off to tackle LA public transport – pretty rudimentary but very cheap. Trouble is it doesn’t really seem to go where you want to go. So the new metro (train) line heads out north and east – but not west (apparently that’s coming). And the eastern line, which I wanted, appears to meander nowhere in particular. Thus I had a half hour walk from the station (which was in the middle of nowhere) to get to one of the major tourist attractions and academic institutions in LA…weird. But was through a beautiful neighbourhood – all immaculate gardens (lots of Hispanic gardeners out in force) – and great mix of architectures and palm trees…just like on TV. The fact that everyone had signs in their front gardens announcing they were protected by XYZ Security who delivered ‘armed response’ took a bit of the gloss off. I hardly saw anyone other than gardeners so no problem and the Huntington lived up to its reputation (check out the website http://www.huntington.org/ ). The gardens were fantastic and the library brilliant (Guttenberg bible, Shakespeare first folio etc) – and they were filming a movie there (apparently to be called Seven Pounds) so if visitors didn’t want to maybe appear in it they couldn’t go past a certain point … needless to say I’m hanging out to see if I made the crowd scene! Then met with their Conservation staff – main focus is rare books and paper cons but also digitization for access. Just interesting to see how they manage with such a unique and valuable collection. Took all day and not back till 5 ish, fairly worn from a lot of walking. Had dinner at a local Japanese, very good but like every other meal here they give you way too much… which made me think re fat people and Americans…can’t say I’ve noticed especially more than anywhere else…is it just something we like to believe??