San Juan Capistrano

Last Friday, Bill and I spent the first part of the day visiting the old Spanish mission at San Juan Capistrano, an hour or so down the Pacific coast from Los Angeles. On the way we drove through some really pretty coastal communities, the kind that more-or-less define California for those of us who mostly know it from the movies and television-- beaches, flowers, lots of adobe and ranch style architecture, etc. We expected that the mission would be kind of isolated, but it was dead center in a bustling little town, and quite crowded already when we arrived (though mostly with school kids clearly on a field trip). Here are a few shots of what we saw:

This is the fountain in the first courtyard. You can see that the place was crawling with youngsters-- there were about six school buses parked outside the mission walls.

Here's a look at part of the interior courtyard. I believe this is the "corridor" along which the kitchen, pantry, and dining areas were located.

There was some really elaborate gold work around the alter in the chapel. Very ornate, especially in comparison to the relative austerity of the pews and the rest of the church.

A bench and some flora around the edge of the interior courtyard.

You really get a sense of how much effort has gone into restoring the mission, which until the 1930s had fallen largely into disrepair. This corner of the garden is indicative of how lush the whole compound is today, after it was revitalized by the flow of tourists over the past sixty years or so.