Monday in Palos Verdes and San Pedro and Long Beach

Last Monday, Becky and I got to hang out together. I haven't posted this yet because I've either been out being a fun, busy traveler, or I've been at work. Sometimes, blogging needs to wait!

Becky and I had a lot of fun sight-seeing around the South Bay area. We started by heading to this chapel I had heard a lot about. People kept calling it the "glass church", but not to be confused with the Crystal Cathedral, I guess the actual name is Wayfarer's Chapel. It's a beautiful church high on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Palos Verdes. It has a wood frame, but the walls and ceiling are glass, and since it's surrounded by beautiful gardens, you can imagine how pretty it is. Or, just look at the pictures!

When we arrived at 1:30pm on a Monday afternoon, we were both a little surprised to find that there was a wedding about to start! The wedding party was just finishing up pictures, and we were thinking "the guests had to take the afternoon off work to attend!" Strange time for a wedding, but I guess at a popular place you fit it in when you can....

Here's a view of the entire chapel, with the wedding pictures being taken.

As we contemplated whether or not we might be able to get closer, we snapped a couple of pictures of the view...

and decided to try some "artsy" pictures.

We decided to go for it, and found a couple of guests getting ready for the ceremony.

Here is the altar, with the beginning of "The Lord's Prayer" carved into the stone.

After getting out of the chapel quickly after that last picture, we walked around the garden a bit.

The steeple can be seen from the road when driving up the hill.

An interesting tree.

Yellow roses are my favorite flower. You can feel free to pass that bit of information on to anyone that might want to know!



Look at how perfect this flower is. All the world seems better when there's a little bit of yellow around!

We passed this great waterfall/pond as we were leaving the parking lot. The rest of the guests were arriving so we figured we better move along!

After leaving the chapel, we drove to Trump National Golf Course. I had heard it was a beautiful spot, and after doing some research online I found that it's open to the public. Now sometimes I've ended up at places where I've felt pretty out of place, but I have to say that at Trump's course, he really has made it feel open to the public. There were lots of signs leading to the public paths or beach access areas so we never felt like we were trespassing. And, the grounds were beautiful!






I don't play golf at all, but I'm guessing all you golfers out there would agree that it was a beautiful course!


After leaving the golf course, we went to the next stop on the list of places I had been hearing about. One of my Korean co-workers lives in the area and she told me about the Korean Friendship Bell park. So, to honor my Korean friends, I thought I should check it out! It turns out that it was a gift from Korea for the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976. Thank you, Korea!

It's a really big bell. Probably pretty loud, too, but we didn't ring it.

The ceiling was painted with fun and bright colors.

This is the view from the park, and you can see the wave-breakers (I think there's an official term, but I can't think of it at the moment) for the Port of Long Beach which is a HUGE port on the Pacific Coast.

On the back side of the bell there's a plaque and I said to Becky "if that was written using letters of our alphabet, we might be able to guess what it says, but with the Korean characters it's a little hard to tell." She responded with "it probably says 'Korean Friendship Bell'." I love spending time with Becky! She cracks me up!

Here's the explanation of the gift.

We were only able to read the left side of it!

[We had started talking about Asian languages and the characters they use during our 4th of July celebration when I told the story of how when I was in Seoul, Korea on a 10-hour layover and I wanted to see the city. Well, at the airport there were signs all over the place but I wasn't even able to guess where I should go, and I couldn't find anyone that could understand me enough to help. Then I saw a bus that said "Hyatt" on it and I figured that might be a place to start. I hopped on it, sat next to some gold dealers from Saudi Arabia who said I should get to the Seoul Tower (similar to the Seattle Space Needle). I got to the Hyatt, hailed a cab and said "Seoul Tower", went up the Seoul Tower and came back down to find my cab gone, found an American serviceman on leave who's cab stuck around, shared it with him back to the Hyatt, hopped on the bus back to the airport 45 minutes out of Seoul, and still made it back with hours to spare before my flight! It was a fun, adventurous day, made even more interesting by the fact that I couldn't read or understand nearly anything around me!]

Becky, having some fun as we left the Korean Friendship Bell.


Next we went to the park that was just down the hill from the Friendship Bell. It was right on the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

I love trees.

The lighthouse at the park.


This was a really steep slope down to the ocean.


It was a really beautiful park!

And very cold with the breeze! I'm glad I've learned to keep a sweatshirt and my jean jacket in the back end of my Rav-4!

At the next stop, we found an area that would have great tide pools during low-tide. I want to come back and check those out!


We saw two different remote-controlled planes so here's a picture of one of them. It was prety big!

An interesting-looking plant.

My not-so-great attempt at an "artsy" picture.

And a little-bit-better shot.

We then left the PV area and headed back to Long Beach. This was taken from the Shoreline area and overlooks Rainbow Harbor.

The Queen Mary (I had posted an earlier picture of what it looks like at night).

Here's a cruise ship heading out to see, and one of the huge cargo ships coming into the Port of Long Beach. It really is a huge port with thousands of containers just sitting in the nearby yard, waiting with all our goods stamped "Made in Taiwan" to be loaded on a truck and sent to our local stores.
We ate lunch at Chili's (where I got to watch my first Twins game of the season on TV!) then walked around the Shoreline area a bit. We found some fun stores to wander through, including this great hat shop that had a matching hat for me! :)


Thanks for the fun day, Bec! I'm so glad that we'll be able to have a few more of those while I'm here!

I need to head off to sleep, but have more fun posts for you to check out and enjoy a little of our California adventure! Next stop, Huntington Gardens!