Our Pre-Thanksgiving Visit with Nick and Alex

On Wednesday, we drove to Pasadena to spend the afternoon and evening with David's college friend, Nick Warner and Nick's fiance Alex.  They live in a beautiful, immaculate 1940's home, whose furnishings are a perfect blend of Nick's Russian and Chinese materials and Alex's tastes in Mexican art and decoration.

After we enjoyed a scrumptious lunch at their house, Nick drove us to The Huntington, the world-renowned library, art museum and gardens.  A complete visit would have taken days, so we had to satisfy ourselves with some highlights.

First on the list was the Japanese Garden, which was built by The Huntington's benefactor, Henry E. Huntington, as a birthday gift for his wife.  It is quite beautiful, and most striking for its design of plantings to complement the rolling terrain.  Here is a photo (pardon the poor exposure) of Nick, Kathy and Alex as we entered the garden:

The bridge in the gardens was conceived by a Japanese architect based on traditional Chinese bridge designs:

The garden had numerous little peaceful corners, including this small pond with statuary and many large koi crusing its borders looking for handouts:

We performed a quick drive-by touring of the art museum.  Most people know of the Thomas Gainsborough painting, "Blue Boy" and the painting,"Pinkie," by Sir Thomas Lawrence, which hang in the gallery facing each other at opposite ends of one room.  Dave couldn't resist asking Kathy to pose with the young whipper-snapper:

One of Nick's favorite area in The Huntington is the cactus garden.  We captured a photograph of Nick and Alex with one of the many beautiful flowering cactuses and succulents:

We finished up our visit with a quick preview of the current exhibit on Father Junipero Serra.  We wished we could have returned to study it in more depth because he played such a big role in the early history of California.

Having returned from The Huntington, we decided to have dinner at one of their favorite local Italian restaurants, Tarantino's Pizzeria, which had relatively inexpensive, but VERY tasty Italian food for all palates.  A glass of wine, some scrumptious garlic rolls, and our favorite dishes supported a couple of hours of conversation and friendship.  We chatted about our wonderful day with them for the entire ride home to our RV campground.