beautiful inspiration

This afternoon a friend and I went over to the Grand Avenue Festival downtown. Block off streets, offer delicious food for a few bucks, perform live music, and I'm there! It was quite the afternoon, the highlight of which you see above: we got free(!) tickets to a concert by the LA Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The hall itself is beautiful, and I had never been inside it until today. By an amazing stroke of luck, our tickets (which had reserved sections) were for the small section behind the orchestra. It was such an experience to sit as if you're looking over the orchestra's shoulders, and a great new perspective to see the conductor at work. And the music!--they performed works by Sibelius, and it was just beautiful.

Of course we ate to our heart's content, and wandered around the concert hall gardens. The afternoon also included a quick visit to the Cathedral where we heard an organ demonstration. The whole outing was made all the better by having gotten downtown via the Metro subway. It was my first time on LA's subway, and aside from a technical glitch on the ride home, I definitely loved the easy access of the subway. The lines should definitely be expanded to cover a greater portion of our city.