DAY 3: MARCH 28, 2011
After an exhausting day at Universal Studios, we moved on to another adventurous day the next day. No more theme park and playing around, because it's time to get a little serious since we were going to deal with education...a bit.
According to our schedule, we were supposed to spend all day in Pasadena for campuses visits. We woke up in the morning to munch on our snacks we bought yesterday as breakfasts. Elda was scheduled to join a campus tour on California Institute of Technology or abbreviated as Caltech at 10 am, meanwhile Aymee would have a campus tour in Pasadena Art Center at around 1-ish.
Elda and I took off first from our hotel at around 9. Aymee was going to catch up with us later in Pasadena, that means she had to find out the direction to Pasadena all by herself. Since Elda and I didn't know how far it would be to Pasadena, taking off an hour before the appointment was quite a risk, especially we were a bit lost in searching for Little Tokyo's Metro station.
Good thing we quickly found it, it was no biggie, and we also got the direction to get to Pasadena.
Just a little bit about Pasadena, it was a city 11 miles from Downtown LA. Compared to LA, Pasadena was less crowded, tourist-friendly, and it got a friendlier, more comfortable vibe. After switching train in Union Station, Elda and I went straight to Pasadena and got off at Del Mar station.
After relying ourselves on the essential Mr. Google Map at our hands, we took a bus down the main road of Pasadena and got off when the GPS told us to.
Apparently, the institution was located not by the side of the crowded main street of Pasadena. We had to explore into the depth of a peaceful neighborhood. Seriously, it was really the subtlest atmosphere I could ever feel from a neighborhood so far in the US, which reminds me of my neighborhood in Jakarta.
The campus itself sort of blends in with the neighborhood since there were no giant signs saying “Caltech” or whatsoever. How we eventually got our way to the Admission office is considerably funny.
First we bumped into a neatly dressed guy who donned a pair of sunglasses. I was like “This must be a Caltech student.” Elda approached him and asked him whether he knew where the Admission office was. The guy told Elda that he had no idea, to which Elda replied. “I thought you were a Caltech student.” Then the guy went. “Oh no, not yet.”
Ooookkaaayyy....sounds someone appears to be confident. Judged from the appearance, this guymay have qualified to become a Caltech student.
The admission office didn't seem to appear no matter how many times we had circled the campus area. By coincidence, we stumbled upon the tour group that we decided to join. No one would notice anyway.
This building reminds me of Palace of Versailles
The pond that faces the court. I love the arches along the hallway.
Japanese Garden much?
Basically the tour involved visiting the campus grounds and especially the dorms. The dorm part left the biggest impression in mind as we visited one of the dorms. We got to take a glimpse of the dorm rooms. What's even more shocking is, we discovered lines of math, chemistry, physics formula scribbled on some dorm rooms' doors.
Too bad I have no pictures of those formulas.
It looked like they just threw a party over the weekend because almost all the decoration was still intact, some decoration was torn down already though. The tour guide, who is a student herself, explained mostly about the social activities and parties each dorm liked having.
The campus tour.
From Elda's observation, since Caltech is somewhat a notable school of science, a lot of people might figure out that it was a serious school. Students fully focused on their studies without bothering to socialize. So that's why the tour guide heavily emphasized about the parties part. I totally agree with Elda's thought though.
The tour ended in the Admission office that we didn't find in the first place. It turns out to be a building that resembled an old, haunted house looking building. I mean, really, when we stepped inside and went upstairs, I could feel the wooden floor beneath me created an eerie cracking sound. Seen from its look in the outside, people could have mistaken it as an ordinary old house.
Yep, above is the admission building I told you earlier.
I don't know about the house below whether it's one of Caltech buildings or not, since it's located right next to the Admission building. Seen from the homey feeling, I'll just consider it as a house then.
Elda got to buy a Caltech shirt just before we left. Elda and I also took a picture in front of a small Caltech logo in one of the buildings.
After we were done with the tour at around 1 pm, we managed to get to Old Pasadena aka Pasadena Downtown, to meet up with Aymee who just arrived. Together, we found a pizza parlor where we had lunch.
Pepperoni pizza for three!
As soon as we finished, we quickly caught a bus to Pasadena Art Center. We only had an hour to go there before the tour began.
Apparently the campus was located up on a hill in a secluded area of Pasadena. When we got there, we aimed to go to the Admission office but somehow – again – we got lost. At first we didn't know which building we had to go. The bus dropped us off in a side of a building but we weren't sure if the Admission was located in that building.
We kind of anticipated that Pasadena Art Center would consist of many buildings just like a common American campus was (Caltech too). But after surrounding the campus and asked bunch of people that told us to go to the front desk to ask where the Admission office was (sounds complicated huh?), we finally – again – stumbled upon the tour in the campus gallery.
Apparently the building we spotted earlier when we got off the bus IS the one and only building. It was unique how the building stretches horizontally like a giant black rectangular box, with only two storeys. Everything is in there: the classes, gallery, admission office, bookstore, etc.
In contrast of our visit to Caltech, the tour guide somehow emphasized how seriousness became a positive quality of the school, saying that the school encouraged all students to be devote into the works. I guess, in contrast of Caltech, a lot of people might assume that art students were relatively relax compared to those who study science or social studies.
As an art student, I am interested to apply to this school.
One of the artwork in front of the gallery. Soooo cute!
Outside the gallery
After the tour was done, we visited the bookstore and it was hella awesome! Seriously I may not be into a fine art a lot, but I do some drawings. I mean, the bookstore provides a gazillion number of art materials!!! It has the completest copic marker collection I've ever seen, mannequins, painting blades with ranging sizes, various kinds of oil painting...for someone who is really into fine art, he or she should be willing to spend days in this not-so-big bookstore.
Anyway, we decided to leave though, since we had to catch up with shopping and dinner time too. We returned to Old Pasadena. We strolled a bit to some clothing store like Forever 21. Since spring was approaching, I bought myself a set of spring clothes consisting of tank top and cardigan.
After a little bit of stroll, we realized it was time to have dinner. The sky wasn't completely dark but it was already 7 o'clock. And apparently it took us long before we decided where to have dinner.
The Yelp and Urbanspoon applications offered quite a lot of choices. I already asked my friend, Vania (who formerly resided in Pasadena), to recommend some good restaurants down the street of Pasadena. The problem is, we were craving for a lot of things. We were considering to go to a Himalayan restaurant but the location wasn't so convincing. We also had to turn down some offers due to the high price.
In the end, we were torn between going to Gyukaku (Japanese food) and Buca di Beppo (Italian food). They were located side by side, which made everything even more complicated. I kind of suggested that since we already had Japanese food two days in a row, why didn't we just eat Italian food? So we eventually had dinner in Buca di Beppo.
Calamari for appetizer!!
Ravioli as the main course. Excuse the low quality picture. This is apparently the best one I can take.
It was getting late when we finished our dinner, that we had to catch a train back to Downtown LA.
Actually there was nothing special with the train station, it was just we decided to kill time while waiting for the train to arrive.
And played head-wrestling on the train
We arrived at our hotel in Little Tokyo at around 9-ish. Before that, we scooted over to the computer in the business center to look for directions to UCLA, Simpang Asia (Indonesian restaurant), Koreatown, and Hollywood, which would be our destination for tomorrow!
That's not the end of the story. Elda and I woke Aymee up when the clock struck 12. Yep, it's Aymee's Birthday!!!!! Aymee was already asleep but Elda and I managed to be awake, and when it was time, we surrounded Aymee and sang Happy Birthday! XD
It's gonna be a looooong day tomorrow!!!!
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