California Missions / El Camino Real [7/12-15]

Given our success with the Oregon Lighthouses we set out to see as many California Missions as possible on our way down the coast. There's 21 California Missions that a situated along and linked together by the historic "Camino Real" - quoting this Camino Real Website & borrowing their overview map:

"The history of the El Camino Real and its bells, is quite interesting. At the same time that the American colonies were rebelling against England, a handful of Spaniards and Mexicans established outposts up the California coast. The first was established in 1769 at San Diego, when they established a fortress and a Franciscan mission. From that point, a series of small self-reliant religious missions were established. Each was a day's travel apart and linked by El Camino Real, Overall, El Camino Real ("The King's Highway") linked 21 missions, pueblos and four presidios from San Diego to Sonoma."

21 turned out to be quite a bit to visit, especially since the Camino Real follows the current 101 highway more closely so than the 1/PCH that was our chosen travel route. Another challenge not to be underestimated, were the mission visits themselves. The Missions are not state parks, but belong to and are run by the Catholic church, which is very noticeable in their museums and in particular in their gift shops, this can be a bit of a trial for the average agnostic Dane...

Here are the 6 we did make it to:

San Juan Bautista - couldn't miss this one for the Hitchcock bonus: this is were the shot the mission scenes for vertigo (although they did tweak it a bit, adding a tower that doesn't actually exist). This one also comes with a particularly lovely Mexican style little village alongside it, which is where we found the Heavenly Espresso shop, which' sign is pictured above...

San Carlos Borromeo de Carmel this one is situated on the outskirts of Carmel and was our favorite in terms of outside beauty -- Interestingly we found that all of the missions we visited were known for being "the most beautiful of all California mission" ... but this one really was amazingly pretty, with a gorgeous amount of colorful flowers surrounding it.

San Luis Obispo de Tolosa - can't say much about this one except for liking the painted interior of the church and maybe also worth mentioning, this was the first one to feature substantial information about the Chumash people who lived in the area before the mission was erected.

Santa Ines - situated at the edge of town in Solvang and next to one of the Danish bakeries, this one came with a delicious smell of Danish pastry while visiting the cemetery, as well as a very well narrated tour of the grounds, pointing out sites of former buildings etc.


Santa Barbara - the beautiful Santa Barbara. One thing we noticed was that as we traveled further south the missions were getting bigger and more costly to visit... Santa Barbara really couldn't keep up with the other missions, although it again was claimed to be the 'most beautiful of California missions'.

San Juan Capistrano - "the Jewel of the Missions" and right down the road from my sisters house in the OC. The church is heavily damaged by the 1812 earthquake as can be seen in this picture, but otherwise the largest missions we stopped at.