One more day of Christmas in San Diego!

Christmas carols in early January? Christmas carols are what the audience heard and sang this afternoon at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park!

Accomplished guest organist Alison Luedke, who has performed with the San Diego Symphony, explained today’s concert. The celebration of Epiphany is traditionally the last day for the performance of Christmas carols, especially those concerning the Three Wise Men.

Accompanying her for the two o’clock free organ concert were the voices of three young people, members of the Nativity Children’s Choir.

I was amazed at the poise of the very young people. And by their confident voices.

You will be hearing their voices well into the future.

Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Tiles made by kids at Del Mar lifeguard station!

The other day, as I walked around to the north side of the 17th Street Lifeguard Tower in Del Mar, I discovered many tiles that had been painted by kids!

The tiles are dated 2008, 2009 and 2010. (Looking closer, I see a 2012, too.)

I can find nothing online concerning this project, so leave what you know in a comment. I’m guessing the artwork was created by families that reside in Del Mar.

In any event, enjoy these colorful bits of art. The painted tiles are bright with sunshine and beachy happiness!

Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

It’s easy to explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on this website’s sidebar. Or click a tag. There’s a lot of stuff to share and enjoy!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Love One Another mural in National City.

Please enjoy this photograph of an inspiring mural in National City. Its message is perfect for the beginning of the Holiday Season.

This is a season for smiles, joined hands, and wishes for Love, Harmony and Peace in our world.

Riders can glimpse the beautiful artwork from the San Diego Trolley’s Blue Line, just south of where the tracks pass under Interstate 5. The mural is in a corner of a parking lot near the intersection of Wilson Avenue and Civic Center Drive.

As you can see, the words are very similar to the lyrics from that classic song Get Together by The Youngbloods.

COME ON PEOPLE, SMILE ON EACH OTHER.

EVERYBODY GET TOGETHER.

TIME TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post fresh blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

It’s easy to explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on this website’s sidebar. Or click a tag. There’s a lot of stuff to share and enjoy!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Fun for kids in La Mesa and Campo!

Do you know any kids who love trains? If you do, there are many opportunities for fun coming up in both La Mesa and Campo!

Yesterday I was passing the La Mesa Depot Museum when I noticed it was open and someone was working inside.

That someone was Station Master Timothy. He was building a new HO scale train layout in the old depot’s baggage room!

After showing me a few nearby historical exhibits, he explained this new layout will eventually be a fun, free activity for visiting kids. There will be a dynamic little town named Kerville (the tracks curve), and a module that can be added that includes both desert and mountainous terrain!

Meanwhile, the La Mesa Depot Museum has a curvy, twisty toy train layout in the adjoining ticket and passenger room that small kids can play with by hand.

Cooler yet, there are those real life train cars outside that one can explore up close and personal! If you’ve ever driven down Spring Street at La Mesa Boulevard, you’ve no doubt seen them.

You can see more photographs in and around the La Mesa museum here.

The La Mesa Depot Museum is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:00 to 3:00 pm and Saturdays 1-4 pm.

. . .

The old La Mesa depot is a satellite of the much larger Pacific Southwest Railway Museum, located out in Campo. There kids can ride historic trains through San Diego’s scenic backcountry. And big kids (adults) can even take the controls of a big, honest-to-goodness diesel-electric locomotive and run it for a short distance!

Need something fun for the family to do next weekend before Halloween? Reserve a ticket for a unique Campo train ride out to a pumpkin patch. It’s called the Pumpkin Express.

Then, before Christmas, kids will enjoy meeting Santa during an incredible train ride on the North Pole Limited!

If you’d like an idea of how awesome this all would be, check out two of my past blog posts. This one has photographs from the train ride out in Campo. And this one shows the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum during its the big 100th Anniversary of the San Diego and Arizona Railway event!

Thank you for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often, so you might want to bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and check back from time to time.

You can explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on this website’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There’s a lot of stuff to share and enjoy!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

The Gingerbread Man runs in Chula Vista!

The Gingerbread Man emerged from a hot oven and arrived in Chula Vista today, thinking he could easily outrun families and kids attending Arts in the Park. But, alas, the famous little cookie met his fate.

The story of The Gingerbread Man was acted out, to the delight of the audience, in a very small wooden theater.

It was a fun demonstration of Kamishibai, a form of outdoor story telling that was popular in Japan during the first half of the 20th century.

The Kamishibai version of The Gingerbread Man was presented by Write Out Loud, who brought their live reading performances to the annual Arts in the Park event, held at Memorial Park in Chula Vista.

Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me. I’m the Gingerbread Man!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Encountering life up close at MOPA.

An extremely powerful exhibition of portrait photography is now on view at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park.

Encounter: Photographs by Jed Fielding features numerous street portraits that make you feel the strangers you see have somehow become your friends. Because that’s the very personal way Jed Fielding approaches his subjects.

The photographs are full of life, smiles, eye contact, playfulness, emotion, sincerity, vulnerability, pride, sadness, freedom. Kids at play in Naples, Italy are pleased to stop for a moment and shyly grin. A mixture of more subtle emotions appear openly in the faces of those who’ve grown older.

I was particularly moved by photos Jed Fielding took of blind children in Mexico City. As his camera shutter clicked, small hands were doing their own seeing. In one photograph fingers reached up to feel the lens.

In those portraits of blind children, more than the others, not a soul wears a mask. Every expression is unaffected, absolutely genuine.

It’s an authentic connection between people that makes these photos so powerful. So alive.

Encounter: Photographs by Jed Fielding is on display at MOPA through September 25, 2022.

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

You missed Red Shoe Day? Donate online!

It’s Red Shoe Day in San Diego!

Volunteers hanging out at busy intersections this morning were collecting donations for the Ronald McDonald House, which helps sick kids who are being treated at local hospitals, providing a nearby place for their families to stay!

Did you miss an opportunity to place some money in a red shoe this morning? Well, you can donate online. Do it here!

Thank you!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Huge fun coming to downtown’s Children’s Park!

Whoa! Check it out!

Look at the huge multi-level playground structure that’s being built for Children’s Park in downtown San Diego! The park is undergoing a major redesign, which will make it more . . . children friendly!

Children’s Park is located north of Harbor Drive, adjacent to Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade. That circular pool with its unique fountain between Front Street and 1st Avenue is part of it. The two-acre city park, with its many shady trees, is a very short walk from both The New Children’s Museum and the San Diego Convention Center.

The park has often been used as a convenient offsite location during Comic-Con. Evidently not this year!

You might remember how, years ago, Children’s Park was filled with numerous large rounded mounds that unfortunately concealed drug and other illegal activity. Those mounds were removed in phases.

Now this important downtown open space is being completely revitalized, with the addition of a playground, an interactive water feature, and a new vendor building.

If you’d like to learn more about the project, you can visit this web page.

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Kids make silly critters at Natural History Museum!

Kids always have lots of fun at the San Diego Natural History Museum! They can check out cool dinosaurs and even living animals. And they can make silly critters out of recycled materials!

The creative activity takes place inside the NAT’s Nature Lab, which is open on Saturdays from 10 to 2. The Nature Lab also hosts school children during field trips to the museum and Balboa Park. It has a natural history library, too!

Have you ever poked your nose into this cool Nature Lab, which is located on the first level of the museum? I did last Saturday!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Giant ants interact with curious kids!

Three enormous ants interacted with excited children today in San Diego.

The strange human-size ants were first spotted carrying large bread crumbs about the green lawn of Liberty Station’s North Promenade.

The onlooking kids quickly understood the silent, methodical ants had a plan. They were carrying the crumbs and dropping them on the grass to form lines!

Lots of kids promptly assisted them!

Ants was the name of this very unique, super fun interactive outdoor performance, a part of La Jolla Playhouse’s 2022 Without Walls Festival at Liberty Station.

The three giant ants came from Polyglot Theatre in Australia!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!