Cinco de Mayo on Olvera Street

There is no shortage of celebrations on Cinco de Mayo in Los Angeles.  But the most authentic is held on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles.  There are performers all day, authentic restaurants and street food, shopping in stores and stall vendors, and a large and festive Latino American crowd.   

I ventured out with a friend for the holiday, and loved the ambiance.  But the crowd was so large that the lines at restaurants prevented us from eating until we got home, where we went to our local Mexican hole in the wall restaurant.  I did find some fun souveniers, that I used for a portrait for Claire.  

I'll go back again on a standard weekday to explore El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, a site near the site of the early Los Angeles pueblo or town where forty-four settlers of Native American, African and European heritage journeyed more than one-thousand miles across the desert from present-day northern Mexico and established a farming community in September 1781.  Now a living museum, El Pueblo is the site of Avila Adobe, a working adobe turned museum furnished as it might have appeared in the late 1840s.

For more information and events schedule, check out Olvera Street Merchants Association Foundation and  El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.