Echo Park

Eric and I love to go exploring, but sometime in the middle of our jaunt through Echo Park, Eric suggested that we might need to stick to museums for the next month or so. It is just so hot! If you don’t have any shade to hide in, it is just…brutal. But I’m still really happy we went on this swan song of a neighborhood scouting trip. I am sure I am not the first person to say this, but Echo Park reminds me a lot of the Mission District in San Francisco: vibrant, scenic, and full of people doing cool stuff.

Echo Park has a lot of gorgeous murals, like this one, that took me right back to my early 20s (where does the time go?), when I’d get off the train at 16th and Mission and tromp off to wherever I was meeting my friends. Good times.

We started off by getting lunch at Red Hill, where we made the dubious choice of sitting outside. At least we were in the shade. And I brought my giant hat!

I did not know that my eggplant sandwich was going to be this gigantic. But I am a sucker for burrata. And hand cut fries.

After that, I was definitely ready for a stroll. And for asking Eric to take my picture in front of a bunch of pretty walls.

The neighborhood lake and surrounding park were closed for renovations, which was a bummer, but at least these gorgeous flowering trees were everywhere we looked.

This is exactly what you want to see on such a hot day. Wish I could have tried them all!

Through a wire grate, I saw the old entrance to this building. It made my head sping to imagine the days when you could just walk on up the stairs to Room 210 to inquire about vacancies.

There were so many bright colors everywhere we looked. Hopefully we can come back again when it’s not so hot and the lake is open for strolling. Here’s to an early fall!