San Diego Part II

San Diego de Alca Mission

On our way home from visiting Coronado island and the Del Coronado Hotel as explained in my last blog , we decided to stop at the San Diego de Alca Mission, the first of the great California Missions which was founded in 1769. It is California's first church and marks the birthplace of Christianity in the far West. Today the Mission, serves as an active parish church and cultural center for people of all faiths. When we got there, there was a mass in progress so we participated in the balance of the celbration.

After mass, we exited the side door of the Basilica and proceeded to visit the rest of the grounds of the Mission. By the time we got back to the church, the door was secured and we were locked into courtyard of the Mission. All the gates leading to the parking lot were also locked so I climbed up the stairs that lead to the bell tower and peering through opening in the tower, I spotted a couple of guys who were still in front of the church so I asked them if they knew how to open the gates. As it turned out, the caretaker was within site and he came and unlocked the church doors to let us out. We came pretty close to spending the night outside in the Mission courtyard. However, if we hadn’t gotten out that way, I was prepared to ring the Mission bells until someone came to rescue us. That was kinda of a unique experience!

Ranunculus flower fields

Thursday April 23 was our day to go visit the famous Zoo located in downtown San Diego. When we got up, I had a developed cold over night but wasn’t feeling too bad. The sky was overcast but the outlook was for sun later in the morning. On our way to San Diego we stoped in Carlsbad where there are huge fields of Ranunculus flowers that they cultivate here for the reproduction of the bulbs. These flowers which grow in a variety of brilliant colours are about the size of tulips and look like a small peonies. The fields were radiant and in full bloom and we took a bunch of photos.

Chineese panda having banboo lunch at San Diego zoo

After visiting the Carlsbad floral gardens, we then proceeded to the city and spent the whole day visiting and taking pictures at the zoo. It features a wide variety of animals, many of which are in danger of extinction including four Chinese panda bears, one which is pictured above. Here they specialize in the study of many of these rare animal species and develop breeding programs for repopulating these scarce type of wild animals.

THE GIRAFFE FAMILY
Mama giraffe, papa giraffe and 6 day old baby giraffe

We started our visit here by taking a narrated bus tour which took us around the facility and gave a very good idea of the layout of the land. After that, we returned to the areas in the park that were of most interest to us. To return back to the entrance and exit of the site, we took an sky tram which lifted us way up in the air for an exciting aerial view of the zoo. All in all, it was an excellent day and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit at the zoo.