So, where to begin writing about my fantastic weekend in SoCal? Jewel and I crammed a lot into a few short days; I can easily see this becoming a 3-part saga.

The latter half of Thursday was all travel - Jewel picked me up at the SLO train station, and together we drove down south. In order to avoid rush hour traffic, we got off the freeway, and took a tour through her Alma Mader, UCLA. It's a beautiful campus with big brick buildings in a park-like setting. It's also huge, especially compared to CWU, where I went! I don't know why I didn't take any pictures. I probably would've gotten some great shots!

After the University Tour, we stopped at Century City to shop at Aveda and Sephora. I scored some Air Control hair spray, Rosemary Mint shaving cream, Volumizing Tonic, and a bar of Rosemary Mint soap (and a free travel size of Rosemary Mint hand and body lotion because I'd bought two Rosemary Mint products!) at Aveda, and picked up a Stila convertible eye shadow/liner in Ivy at Sephora.

Once we finished our shopping, we had dinner at the Moustache Cafe, er, I mean, Chocolat. Apparently Moustache Cafe was bought out, but the menu and the atmosphere were the same, so we took a chance and stayed. It was delicious! Just as good as it ever was! I had the chicken crepes with Béarnaise sauce (my fave!), and afterwards, Jewel and I split a chocolate soufflé for dessert. OMG!! It was scrumptious!! We sat out on the enclosed patio, and it was very comfortable, relaxing and pleasant.

When we finally reached Jewel's house, we settled in and tried to watch Sideways, but only made it through about half of it, as we were both falling asleep. It's really a very, very good movie (despite the constant profanity, graphic sex scenes and male full-frontal nudity), and I think it (and actor Paul Giamatti) might've gotten robbed at the recent Oscars. That's just my opinion, though. Anyway ...

Friday morning we drove over to Santa Ana, and hopped the train to San Juan Capistrano. The ride by rail is a pleasant thirty minutes long, and we grabbed some breakfast to enjoy en-route. In SJC, we toured the Mission, browsed some of the quaint little shops, and had a wonderful afternoon tea at The Tea House on Los Rios. I wish we'd had more time to spend in town, as there's a whole historical district and walking tours that I would've liked to have seen and done. Oh, well, maybe next time.

The Mission is simply stunning. It's much bigger than the one here in SLO; around every corner there was more and more to see. The grounds are beautifully landscaped with green lawns, statuary, fountains, colourful flowers and native plants. Many of the rooms are set up to appear as they did hundreds of years ago, and historical timelines, murals and artifacts are displayed throughout. You can really get a sense of what life at the Mission was like in the late 1700s. The Serra Chapel is breathtakingly beautiful and ornate. Jewel and I were quite awed by it. The smaller chapel off to the side was filled with well over a hundred burning candles, and it was thick and suffocating as a sauna! Still, we lit candles, too, even though neither of us is Catholic. Later, we almost bought Rosaries, despite our non-Catholic status. The gift shop had two fabulous rosaries - a lapis one I had my eye on, and a very cool black onyx one Jewel fancied - but in the end we chose not to buy them. Probably a good thing, since the lapis one I wanted was, like, two hundred dollars!

The Mission was having some sort of artist's day when we were there. We never did figure out quite what it was, but dozens of artists had easels set up around the grounds, and were drawing and painting pictures of the mission. It was fun to walk behind some of the artists and watch them sketch out their painting! There were some really lovely pieces being created! After wandering around the Mission, seeing pretty much everything there was to see, Jewel and I sat on one of the wooden benches and just soaked in the beautiful day and peaceful setting. If I lived in SJC, I could see myself visiting the Mission quite often, just sitting in the park-like gardens and enjoying the peace and quiet.

It would've been perfect but for the ungodly children who were running around screaming like banshees, and not being at all controlled by their guardian/teacher/whatever-the-heck she was. Gah!

I got a ton of gorgeous photos at the Mission, which I've organized into an easy-to-navigate gallery here. In fact, I took so many pictures I filled up my memory card, and had to dispose of some of the not-so-good shots to make room for pictures of our Afternoon Tea. Here I was worried about the battery running dead, so I packed the extra battery and charger, but completely and totally neglected to pack my extra memory card. I went the whole weekend on one battery, and didn't even bother charging it! Gah!