Grand Ave Festival

Brownie and Winnie says:

Today is a hot Sunday. We are planning to go to the Grand Ave Festival held at Grand Ave. We wake up quite early; and after our breakfast, we walk over to the bus stop in front of USC to take a Dash bus to downtown LA in order to reach our destination. Upon reaching around First Street, we alight the bus. There is still some distance to walk before we can reach our destination. The first hurdle is to walk up Bunker Hill, the long flight of stairs as shown below in the picture. Actually, there is an escalator for the physically challenged :)
The festival is held at 3rd St to 1st St, at Grand Ave, so it is really at the CBD of downtown LA. We walk past BOA building, KPMG, Mellon Bank, AT&T (all shown below) and many others...



Before long, we reach the entrance of the Grand Ave Festival with big red blockades. The road is closed for the day for the festival. Cannot wait to go and enjoy the day :p

See the Grand festival sign hanging up, and Walt Disney Concert Hall in the left side of the photo.

There are a lot of stalls set up to promote certain places of interest. More and more people start to gather as it gets later in the noon.

We even get to put our thumbprints as a memory, of the event.

The blue and green love-shaped prints...

Of course, no visit to Grand Ave is complete without a visit to the Walt Disney Concert Hall... And since today is cultural festival, there are free mini-concerts to see and hear inside the Hall.

Queuing booth for the free tickets...

Since our concert timing is 330pm, so we just walk around for lunch and to see the on-goings of the festival. There is a whole row of tents selling food of LA, from the restaurants and food outlets nearby the area. And you can see people queuing up for the food... Most are just grab-and-go food, so you can sit on the floor and eat... Cannot be too fussy...
We get ourselves a pepperoni pizza and cookies from California Pizza Kitchen... And just find a cozy place outside the Concert Hall to eat and get out of the sun. The pizza is good, just like CPK in Singapore, full with cheese and meat...

After the enjoyable lunch, we walk around. See that the walkway is beautifully painted, and even children are allowed to draw on the pavement, using chalks. And a group of artists, from a local art group called Red Cats, are drawing their creations on the walkway...

They just started on the drawing, so we will drop by before the end of the day to see their masterpiece...


There is a stage setup for singers to perform to the audience. And this is a group of Brazilian entertainers, with their Samba songs.

On the other end of Grand Ave, near 1st St, another performance is taking place "Drum Town". But this one involves the audience to drum along the music.. So of course we participate :)

Concert time!!
We walk to Walt Disney Concert Hall for our performance.

Inside the Concert Hall...

OMG, the performance is good!! The lady singer has a very nice voice, and she can really sing. Together with other musical instruments, like guitar, violin, piano, harp and even R&B DJ... It is so smoothening.


Of course, as promised, before we go home, we drop by the Red Cats to see their masterpiece...

And we are on our way home...