A Celebration of Connie and Andrew!

Sunday evening was the main course (in more ways than one) of our trip to LA – the opportunity to get together with Connie’s extended family, and Andrew and Connie’s friends, to celebrate Connie and Andrew's marriage last month. Happily on Saturday their marriage license had arrived in the mail so all was official!

A group of about 80 of us gathered at the Elite Restaurant in Monterey Park on Sunday evening. Unfortunately, Robert, Janet and Patrick were not able to make it, but Aunt Ellen joined us to bolster the Moyle ranks.

Cooper Carras, the wedding photographer who had accompanied Andrew and Connie to Buenos Aires last month, was also there to take more pictures. After a series of more formal family photographs we got down to the business of eating.

Even before we managed sit down at the tables and get to the formal menu, a roast pig arrived to tide us over during the reception.

The ears and snout were crispy and quite tempting (especially in light of my recent pig head adventure), but, keeping in mind the need to make a good impression on Connie’s side of the family, I managed to restrain myself.

Connie had planned a fabulous dinner of - OMG - THIRTEEN courses.

The dishes just kept coming throughout the evening as we whispered words of encouragement to each other and admonitions to “pace yourself”. Of course, it did not help that at our table we had a few extra dishes off the menu in light of the alergies Andrew and Alex have to certain seafoods!

Andrew and Connie circulated among the tables during the evening entertaining the gathering by periodically responding to the clinking of glasses with a kiss.

We are very lucky to have Connie as a member of our family and to joined with the Sung family.

I hope for more such dinners between our families in the future!

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Bergamot Station - Time Out for Some Culture in Santa Monica

We were in Santa Monica on Saturday visiting Andrew and Connie and, after a nice breakfast at a cozy diner named Snug Harbor, a short walk from their apartment (we somehow still had some room left notwithstanding the huge dinner at Carlitos Gardel the night before!), decided to check out Bergamot Station, a cluster of art galleries housed in a complex of industrial buildings just off the 10 Freeway in Santa Monica. The name, Bergamot Station, dates back to 1875 when the area was a stop for the Red Line trolley running from Los Angeles to the Santa Monica Pier.

Although we did not manage to visit all of the galleries, of those we did visit the exhibits I enjoyed the most were:

~ “The Last Iceberg,” an exhibit of beautiful photos taken by Camille Seaman at the Richard Heller Gallery [“one piece of a larger project entitled "Melting Away" which documents the polar regions of our planet, their environments, life forms, history of human exploration and the communities that work and live there.”]:

In addition to her photos of icebergs, I also found online a selection of some incredible photos from Seaman's new portfolio, "The Big Cloud".

~ An exhibit of paintings by Julie Heffernan at the Mark Moore Gallery (a beautiful set of paintings, each showing a great deal of work and attention to detail, although with a somewhat disturbing undertone -- I am not sure where I would hang one in our home):

Julie Heffernan - Self Portrait as Great Heap

The Sour Harvest blog has a very good overview of the show.

~ An exhibit of works by the Peruvian artist Fernando de Szyszlo at the Latin American Masters gallery:

We also took a look around Hiromi Paper International which had some amazing Japanese and other paper products and really deserved more time.

Finally, we also stopped off at the Cafe for a late lunch.

Bergamot Station is well worth a visit.

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