Pasadena

Sometimes you have an image of a place in your mind's eye which turns out to be totally different from reality. So it was with Pasadena. To me it was going to be hot and dusty with palm trees and Mexicans and gun slingers slinging guns outside wooden clapboard houses. In fact it turned out to be almost alpine with fir trees and a lot of red brick and Victorian shop fronts. And it was cold! I even visited a chalet - built in about 1907 by Mr. Gamble of Proctor and Gamble fame. He was already very wealthy from his candle and soap business, and all the wood was imported from South America, hand carved and polished. It's a very dark and sombre house in Arts and Crafts style and unsurprisingly none of his children wanted it so it was eventually sold. I didn't like it at all but interestingly it was used as a set in the film Back to the Future: the DeLorean was built in the garage that you can see on the right of the chalet!

The Gamble House, Pasadena, with the garage to the right.