We decided to check out the Lake Shrine, which is run by the Self-Realization Fellowship and is located in Pacific Palisades on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean; the original shrine was dedicated by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1950.  This is a place for reflection and meditation.

The grounds are beautiful, with several small statues mounted part way up the hills surrounding the small lake in the center.  There is a memorial to peace that contains a small amount of the ashes of Gandhi, which is across from the Golden Lotus Archway.

Both of us in front of the Gandhi Peace Memorial

Me in front of the memorial (Aviva takes good pictures – the subject helps of course)

The Golden Lotus Archway from across the lake

As we walked along the lake, we came upon some ducks sleeping and two swans preening.

Ducks sleeping at lake side

Two swans preening

On the other side, there’s an old windmill which was converted to the first temple and is today a meditation place.

The windmill which was the first temple here

Aviva with the windmill across the lake

A wierd bush we found – we’d like to know what it is

Of course we stopped at the gift shop – I bought a pair of Ohm earrings.  We didn’t feel like climbing the long stairway to the new temple, but it looks from down below to be very neat.

From the shrine we went into Santa Monica and shopped at our favorite bookstore there, Hennessey + Ingalls Bookstore.  I bought a book of 1000 decorated initials; I want to consider re-working the main page to our web site.  I also go the Giraffe from the d-torso line.

We had dinner at Gate of India at 117 Santa Monica Boulevard in Santa Monica.  The food was good, the restaurant small, and the service friendly.

We picked up the dog, who spent the day playing with a 5 month old German Sheppard puppy at Uncle Jeff’s.

And I then spent the rest of the night failing to get my Toshiba TiVO and DVD player to work right; it won’t show me the option to use the RF input as an input (yea, we still have a very old TV in the main room).