I’ve always found New Mexico to be a fascinating state. From its unique Southwestern architecture to their annual holiday traditions of luminarias, I wouldn’t be surprised if New Mexico were to meet almost all of my expectations and in the process, win my heart. Luminarias aren’t really a thing outside of New Mexico however I was still able to experience it here in Southern California, at the California Botanic Garden. Wonderful, isn’t it?
The Festival of Lights held in Riverside by The Mission Inn Hotel and Spa makes it to various lists and for good reason. It’s free and it’s pretty. Since I’d been there before, I was heavily contemplating on whether I should bother with going there again. Well, in the end, I decided to just go to the event because it’d been a while.
I remember silently gawking at the beautiful Christmas trees back when I first attended the Festival of Trees at the Riverside Convention Center in 2019. Unfortunately, I didn’t do much gawking this time around. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn’t see enough holiday cheer in the atmosphere and was thus just turned off by everything.
The California Botanic Garden is a hidden gem within the city of Claremont. I say this because I only learned of this place recently and it’s such a nice find. I doubt many people are aware of this garden but I suppose this is a lie since the garden holds an annual holiday event here that’s quite popular (and on the expensive side) and when I visited the garden, there were a decent amount of people present. Not busy but not empty either.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I decided to buy a ticket to the first ever Anime Expo Chibi event. Regardless, I decided to buy a ticket since I was in desperate need of doing something to feel “normal” again. Would there be a lot of people? Perhaps, but I figured it’d be a lot less in comparison to the main Anime Expo event held “every” summer. And I was right.
