Another Beautiful California Mission

Mike and I have now visited 12 California missions and this certainly is a beautiful one. A couple of interesting facts: When they first built the mission, it was east of its current location and was on too hilly of a site. It was not good for farming and they ended up moving to their current location. Of course, it is the first mission ever built in California and, because of this, it has received a special commendation from the Pope. It looks like some kind of colorful umbrella and we got a picture of it:) We went from this historic site to another–the Presidio.

The grounds were very nice, but the building is only open on the weekends so we will have to save this for another trip. Finally, we ended our morning by heading into Old Town. It is built around a historic pueblo. It was California’s first Spanish settlement started in 1769. It was also controlled by the Mexican government before becoming part of the United States. A lot of interesting things to see and do. We enjoyed watching the blacksmiths work and the tasty margaritas for lunch!

Another day, another great adventure. We headed to explore the downtown area. We started by parking in a three hour zone to visit the USS Midway-a decommission aircraft carrier that is now a museum. Once on board we realized our mistake. There were over 66 exhibits to visit and we would never finish is three hours! Oh well, another reason to head back to San Diego. They did an amazing job with this exhibit, it is really well done and worth the price of admission. There was even a retired pilot on the flight deck showing us exactly how hard landing a plane on a ship can be. We will definitely go back. Next we headed into the Gaslamp District and were amazed at all the restaurants and bars–wow!

We found a great place to eat dinner before walking into Petco Park from our restaurant to watch the Padres against Arizona. We had great seats and thought it was a great place to watch a little baseball.

We are getting close to our week being over….so we headed up the coast a bit to check out La Jolla and Torrey Pines–very nice indeed. We were able to stop at many places in the neighborhoods and the views were wonderful. The best views came when we made our way to the Torrey Pines Glider Port. A grassy slope that ends with a steep drop-off and the ocean below. Paragliders get all ready and hop off the edge of the cliff to create colorful sails gliding over the ocean. It is the largest tandem paraglider operation in the world. This means if you want to fly–come on down with $$$ and they will take you out. While we watched at least 10 people went out for their opportunity to fly.

Who knows maybe Mike will go out next time. We ended the day having dinner with Andrew Vesey! Always a fun dinner companion. We even got to meet his brother Jeremy and his family. Sad to say we are at the end of our week–back home for us, hopefully with no flat tires this time.