The magical world of Harry Potter has invaded San Diego’s Balboa Park! An incredible, epic display has materialized just in time for Halloween, courtesy of the House of England at the International Cottages!
Check out all these awesome Harry Potter props inside and outside the House of England cottage!
Is that Sirius Black in dog form?A friendly witch welcomes everybody to the House of England cottage before Halloween.The four houses of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry have banners hanging.The Sorting Hat is ready to sort you!Ready for class to begin?Nagini is on the loose near the Monster Book of Monsters!Watch out! Voldemort likes unicorn blood.It’s a mandrake root! Are your earplugs in?Thank goodness, this Cornish Pixie isn’t loose!Get some dark magic artifacts at Borgin and Burkes.Looks like the Goblet of Fire and tiny Patronuses.Get your Essence of Bat Wings! Full Strength!Hedwig has brought a letter.Must be Snape’s class. Pick your poison!We must be in the Owlery on the top of Hogwarts Castle’s West Tower.Dark wizards are on the loose!Ready for a game of Quidditch?Perhaps you’d like to battle these chess pieces. They don’t seem terribly large.Books can contain so much magic! (Uh, oh–tell Ron that Scabbers is loose.)Fawkes, Dumbledore’s phoenix, is ready to help Harry.Gigantic spiders! Are we in the Forbidden Forest? No, just outside, in the rear of the House of England cottage in Balboa Park.Can you see this Thestral?WATCH OUT! It’s a Death Eater!!!
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Numerous dragons invaded Balboa Park this weekend! As did tigers and elephants and hummingbirds and panda bears, and almost every sort of creature, great or small.
All were the subjects of amazing works of art, displayed in the Casa del Prado during the Friends of Sumi-E 21st Annual Art Exhibition!
According to the Chinese lunar calendar, we’re now in the Year of the Dragon. So it’s not surprising that many of the brush paintings I saw today depict dragons.
Friends of Sumi-E is a group of San Diego artists who practice traditional Japanese brush painting, which is called sumi-e or suiboku-ga. They also provided classes for those interested in learning the art.
One cool aspect of sumi-e exhibitions in Balboa Park is the public can watch skilled artists at work. And anyone can try their own hand at creating a beautiful, one-of-a-kind piece of art!
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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 X (formerly known as Twitter)!
An absolutely fantastic dragon has landed in San Diego’s Little Saigon neighborhood!
Today, February 10, 2024, is the Lunar New Year. We’ve entered a Year of the Dragon, so this recently completed mural near the corner of El Cajon Boulevard and Menlo Avenue is just perfect.
According to the Chinese zodiac, 2024 is the year of the Green Wooden Dragon. The green means renewal and rebirth are portended!
I noticed a couple weeks ago that Thao Huynh French had begun creating this spray-painted street art. See those photos here.
Her murals are awesome! I’ve photographed a few them over the years around San Diego, particularly in Little Saigon. Last time I saw her, she was painting giant pandas in North Park!
Thao Huynh French is an accomplished Vietnamese American artist, cofounder of Mindful Murals.
You can learn much more about her by reading this article!
Is this one of the coolest murals you’ll ever see?
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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 X (formerly known as Twitter)!
A large Year of the Dragon mural is now being painted in the heart of San Diego’s Little Saigon!
Thao Huynh French has begun creating this street art, which will be located at El Cajon Boulevard and Menlo Avenue, across from Sin Lee Food and the oft-photographed Little Saigon postcard mural.
I happened to noticed this nascent artwork as I walked in east San Diego this morning.
The Year of the Dragon, according to the Chinese zodiac, begins February 10, 2024. A number of festivals will be held around San Diego. I plan to visit one or two!
Next time I walk this way I hope to capture cool photos of this Year of the Dragon mural, finally completed.
If you want to see another incredible mural by the same artist, which was painted a couple years ago on Menlo Avenue north of El Cajon Boulevard, click here!
UPDATE!
To see the completed mural, which is utterly awesome, click here!
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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 X (formerly known as Twitter)!
Several interesting sculptures can be found at the Pier 32 Marina in National City. Two sculptures I documented six years ago here. A third I hadn’t noticed until a couple days ago. It stands among trees by a parking lot at the south end of Marina Way, near the entrance to the Bayshore Bikeway.
The kinetic sculpture is called Helicoid III. Created by Robert Pietruszewski in 2007, it was once part of an Urban Trees outdoor exhibition along San Diego’s Embarcadero.
Helicoid III silently moves about in the sea breeze, its metal arms turning in different directions like a complex three-dimensional clock marking time. A timely analogy when you consider today is New Year’s Day. We continue to quietly swing into the future.
As I continued my walk and approached Pepper Park, I noticed another sculpture from an old Urban Trees exhibition. It’s the Sea Dragon, by Deana Mando in 2006.
Sea Dragon once stood on the boardwalk between the USS Midway and Seaport Village. Today it makes its home between the National City Aquatic Center and the Pepper Park Boat Launch Ramp. You can see photos I took of Sea Dragon seven years ago here!
Both of these outdoor sculptures are now part of the Port of San Diego Tidelands Collection of public art.
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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!
Today is the second and final day of the 11th Annual San Diego International Dragon Boat Race. Lots of action can be seen out on Mission Bay!
Enthusiastic teams from across the nation (including Southern and Northern California, Nevada, Arizona, Minnesota and New York) plus international teams (I noted Vancouver, Canada) have come together on this sunny San Diego weekend to race in traditional dragon boats.
I arrived at the event in the early morning just as things were getting started. Team members were stretching and warming up, the boat captains were having their meeting, and then the action began!
As the first boats paddled out to the starting line, just beyond the dock of the San Diego Mission Bay Resort, a group of Scouts presented the colors for the National Anthem.
Then here came the dragon boats, each team furiously paddling to the beat of a big drum!
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Look at this! Even more cool stuff is appearing in downtown San Diego on the Sunday before 2022 Comic-Con!
A castle has materialized, Batman has arrived (in two places that I saw), and a couple of Comic-Con offsite activations have begun construction. I spied something awesome going past on a forklift and a mysterious something you might help me identify!
Workers getting everything ready have three more days. And the big Petco Park Interactive Zone is still a parking lot full of cars. Better get busy!
Some signs for the Comic-Con Shuttle Bus Stops are out on sidewalks already.A unique Batmobile has arrived! I saw this cool vehicle by the Hard Rock Hotel. I was told it belongs to a perennial Batman cosplayer!The NBCU Corner by the Tin Fish is just beginning to set up. I was told the inside of the Tin Fish restaurant will be modified for Comic-Con.Padres fans chill out at Gaslamp trolley station as Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty pass by.The very cool Severance wrap on the Hard Rock Hotel seems to be finished.The Krapopolis wrap on the Omni is nearly done.The Shrek dragon Elizabeth is romping across the Starbucks window at the Hilton Bayside.Okay, guys. I told you I’d include your photo. Having too much fun by a creepy forest, which has been installed at the FX activation near the Hilton.A gloomy gray, creepy look at the American Horror Stories wrap in progress. It was overcast in the mid-afternoon.Woohoo! Crates full of Bandai props have arrived behind the Marriott near the marina. Dragon Ball is coming!Multiple crates indicate Statue of Great Ape Vegeta. Must be huge. Maybe it’s mislabeled, and it’s actually Grape Ape…Look what I spotted on multiple forklifts passing by on the bayfront walkway. It looks like some Comic-Con swag bags will feature a Jim Lee design. (Possibly more than one!)Marriott Welcomes Comic-Con 2022.Look at what’s being attached to the Manchester Grand Hyatt’s parking garage! Batman on a big banner!Batman, Robin and Batgirl are coming this Fall to Cartoonito on HBO Max.Workers are still getting the Super Slide ready at the FOX Krapopolis offsite. Kids across the street at The New Childrens Museum were gazing at the slide dreamily.The Gray Man offsite for Comic-Con is coming along rapidly.I suppose we’ll be walking through there.They were testing the big video screen.The Audible sand sculptures are materializing slowly. They’re really cool.A creepy sand skull!On the Hilton Gaslamp we’re informed that Beavis and Butt-Head are the heroes that we deserve. Thanks a lot.Woah! The House of the Dragon offsite will be a big castle! What lurks inside? A dragon? It must have very large and tough claws.Star Trek’s 10 Forward is now located at 100 North Forward Avenue, by the Happy Does smiley.Do those doors slide open with a quick swoosh?A prop on the sidewalk outside the Star Trek: Picard offsite activation, now being built. Does this futuristic contraption mix matter and antimatter? Or strong drinks?
If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!
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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!
My friend Mitchell Walker, who plays the didgeridoo in San Diego’s beautiful Balboa Park, has an amazing new instrument!
A didgeridoo named Draco!
Draco means dragon–and this musical dragon can be made to stick its tongue out at passersby! Kids love it!
The dragon perched atop Mitchell’s new didgeridoo is made of molded resin. It was created by award-winning Southern California artist Kitty Cantrell. See her website here!
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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 can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
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