Castle Green

I don't know exactly why I was so tired, but I didn't wake up until 9:00 this morning. Last week was pretty intense and the weekend quite full, too.

Yesterday I went with a friend to tour the Castle Green. We had tried to get tickets in advance, but when my friend went to Castle Green on Friday, nobody was there who knew about the tickets. As we stood in line to buy the tickets at the door, the two people behind us said they had extra tickets for friends who couldn't make it, and we could just have them. We offered to pay for them, but they said just to pass the favor along to someone else sometime.

Castle Green used to be a grand old hotel, which has been converted into condos. Many of the architectural details have been preserved. There is an abundance of Port Orford cedar wood moldings and grand fireplaces in the ground level common rooms, and the elevator is one of the oldest in the west. Quite a few of the condos were open for tours. There are strict rules about the types of renovations that can be done in the individual units, although within those restrictions the units have been redone in a variety of styles from craftsman to artsy to modern. Most of the kitchens and bathrooms are tiny, and most of the units have a balcony of some sort. Some of the common areas and individual units are pictured on the filming and shooting location page. The type of people who live there includes older folks with lots of money who've lived there a long time, artist-types (e.g., animators for Hollywood studios), and others who appreciate the uniqueness of the building and its location in hip old town Pasadena.

It would be fun to live there, but would require a lot of money either to rent or buy. Also you'd have to find a garden plot somewhere else if you wanted to do more than container gardening.