When I made my way to the meeting area on the second floor of the hotel this morning, I was surprised to find that a filming crew had taken over the first floor lobby. From the balcony, I watched as a four-second scene from a Mucinex commercial was filmed over and over again, all morning. It was fascinating to watch! At noon, I met with Chryssa to talk some things over.

I decided to explore the city this afternoon. My first stop was the little orange building at the top of the pond-like fountain at California Plaza, which I discovered was the site of the currently closed-for-renovations Angels Flight Railway. From there I walked up Grand Avenue until I reached the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which is part museum as well as a church. One of the first things I noticed was that there were representations of stellar constellations sculpted into the ground.

I took a northeasternly path and spotted an interesting mural along the side of a highway that was part space scenery, part Greco-Roman imagery. Unfortunately, someone had scrawled ugly graffiti over it, but it was still cool looking.

I finally reached my intended destination, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, the site of the first settlement of the city and a huge latino community. A couple of Native Americans were playing beautiful pipe music in the park. I browsed through the small marketplace of imported items from Mexico and completed some of my gift shopping. I then took Main Street south and walked through an area that was a neat combination of Spanish and Asian, until I reached 4th Street.

I arrived back at the hotel in time for the last afternoon session on current missions and instruments. Of course, the talks about GLAST and Swift were the most interesting to me; they were among my favorite talks of the meeting so far. I'm so excited for the launch of GLAST this May!