South to San Diego

Our first stop of the day was in a little village called San Juan Capistrano. The minute we stopped in the cute little town, we were greeted by a tiny street full of cute coffee shops and gift stores. Unfortunately, it was New Years Day and a lot of the breakfast cafes we wanted to try were closed. Therefore, we walked into the main town the next street over and were the first ones into the restaurant, Sundried Tomato, for breakfast. As soon as we finished, we walked down the road to the Mission San Juan Capistrano. This historic mission was founded in 1776 by the Spanish and is still in use today. The architecture was absolutely beautiful and inside, the mission was so peaceful. 

Here are a couple of photos I took from inside the mission:

Ruins of the old church inside the mission

Inside the Serra Chapel

Courtyard in the Mission San Juan Capistrano

We got our audio guides and drifted apart in order to explore the mission ourselves. It was amazing to see that the mission was still standing, even despite all the Southern Californian earthquakes, and even still in use. The 1782 Serra's Chapel was exquisite and still held mass every morning at 7am. I had a really good time wandering around and learning about the mission and was so glad we managed to go visit. 

The town of San Juan Capistrano

Hanaa quickly became bored and found an outlet to charge her phone at while we looked around. Once Dad found out what she was doing, he hurried us up and we had to move along to downtown San Diego. We made it to Balboa Park in San Diego and joined the masses in walking around the beautiful Spanish architecture and museums, which were all closed due to the holiday. We did a lot of walking and dodging of dogs and their walkers and ended up circling the entire, enormous park. While seeing all the museums' exteriors, a gigantic organ in an outdoor terrace, Japanese gardens, the Old Globe Theater, and the California Tower, we drove to downtown.

Here are some photos from Balboa Park:

Exterior of the Casa del Prado in Balboa Park, San Diego

California Tower in the distance

The Old Globe Theater

This looks like Turkish!

The city of San Diego looked just like Pittsburgh, except with much wider streets, a lot more bars, and as usual, hundreds of palm trees. We toured around the main streets, stopped at Ghirardelli to grab delicious hot chocolates and started off in the sunset towards San Clemente for a Mexican dinner to end the day. Our Mexican dinner was INCREIBLE! We went to a restaurant called Avila's El Ranchito and I ordered the Avocado Tacos, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The food was very authentic, with Mexico being so close to where we were, and I tried the spiciest hot sauce imaginable! Afterwards, when heading across the road to our car, just walking gave me crazy heartburn! However, the meal was one of our best and everyone returned to the resort content.

The best Mexican restaurant I have ever been to!