Finally Back...and so not blogging.....

I've decided that I am officially a terrible blogger. I have all the best intentions and then when I start thinking about what to write, it becomes bigger than it should be and then nothing happens, nothing is put down. This is typical me...the panic, the unnecessary worry, oy vey! And then I think about all the bloggers out there, all the ones that I love to read and then I start to compare and you know how wrong that is. Ok, I'm shuttin' my trap and moving on....

Charlie Bravo and I had a lovely time away! You can sometimes forget that getting away doesn't have to mean leaving the country (as much as that pains me to say it cause I'm always itching to jump on a plane to Italy ANY DAY), so our plan for a California road trip turned out to be awesome! In a nutshell, we did a tour of all the California missions starting in San Diego up to Fremont - that's 18 missions people! 18! We didn't get to 3 missions above us but we now feel that we just have to since we did the rest. Talk about obsessive but we had a plan and damned if we didn't stick to it.

In between the missions here's a quick synapses of what we did:
(p.s. click on photos to get a closer look)
Spent some time in L.A, hung out at Olvera Street for Dia de los Muertos and saw some trance-like dancing by Aztec dancers while eating churros.

Took some great night shots in downtown Los Angeles and Chinatownn.

Ate at Phillipes a bunch and had a celebrity sighting on W.3rd street that was totally weird and surreal with paparazzi jumping out of cars....I think it was Mishca Barton.

Observed a modern boutique hotel/youth hostel that "displays" its guest for all the world to see, living 24 hours a day in two motel rooms created in street-level storefront windows in downtown L.A.
Stopped on the PCH 1 to check out the surfers in Malibu and watch the sunset.

Drove along country roads stopping to jump out of the car and into some farm fields to see what kind of produce was growing (everything looks green and hard to tell)

Visited Hearst Castle and decided that I would like to vacation there.

Hung out at San Luis Obispos farmers market in the evening and ate steak sandwiches.

Picked up pretty little rocks that looked like gems on Moonstone Beach in Cambria.

Played air hockey at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk arcade (I so won).

And back to the missions...Even though there's a lot of similarity amongst the missions, I can honestly say that I didn't get tired of seeing them one after another. There were some that were less interesting than others, some with barely any structure left and others so well preserved. Some had cities that had grown up around them while others looked just like it did when the Native Americans were there with vast, sweeping views that took my breath away. Now, if you are from California and know even a little about the missions' histories, you'll know the injustices done to the Native Americans so I'm not even gonna go there...not to dismiss it but it's just such a sad state of affairs. Instead, here's a collage of some of the beautiful aspects that the Indians brought to the Missions.