SF Road Trip - Day 8 - Mission San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly SLO & Mission Santa Barbara

[Yet another post coming out weeks later! 7/22]

The last day of our trip brought us to the lovely town of San Luis Obispo, home to the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (see plaque below) and also to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly SLO). Last night we saw bit of the main drag - there was a street festival going on. Lots of college students too. We didn't originally intend to visit the missions when we were planning our trip, but figured, since TC had to learn about the California Missions (in which native Americans were subjugated and coerced by the Spaniards to build these missions with their blood, sweat and tears in the name of God and glory, and dying like flies from diseases from said Spaniards in the process...), we thought it might be cool to see a few of them since they were on the way down.

Here's the head honcho of the Mission system in California, Father Junipero Serra. His bones are buried in the Mission in Carmel where we were a few nights before (well, we were actually at the Mission Ranch area, next to the mission). I think there's a statue of this guy at every mission. It's kind of hard for me to be excited about this guy. The native Americans didn't ask to be "converted" to Catholicism, much like the Filipinos in the Philippines and the native peoples in Mexico didn't ask to be colonized. Despite this, we still found it valuable to visit these places so our daughter could learn about history firsthand.
Click to enlarge - plaque about the Mission Bells...
I later saw a sign that said that photography was NOT allowed. Ooops. This was one of the altars...
OMFG - can you believe that this is a wreath made out of HUMAN HAIR? Nice hobby.
Mass was going on when we arrived. The place was jam packed.
After about an hour or so here, we headed down to Santa Barbara - talk about a beautiful city! It's gorgeous there! The mountains are close by and there are lush and rolling hills! Everything here is so pretty and scenic! This town is also home to another famed university, UCSB, and is home to yet another mission, the Mission Santa Barbara, also known as the "Queen of the Missions" but before we went to the Mission, we stopped off to have lunch at McDs! This was one of the main streets (can't remember the name).
In order to use their bathroom, you had to get a token, but only if you were a paying customer. If you came in from off the street and just wanted to do your business, they charge you a quarter. There were a lot of homeless folks IN the McD's and also hanging out on the sidewalk. Not to sound like an elitist, but the bums looked kind of incongruous in such a relatively picturesque setting.
TC's cheeseburger from her Happy Meal - which she had with apple juice, not a soda.
We let her have fries this time (purely for selfish reasons - so we could have some too!) - the other choice was apple slices with caramel dip...
Her Happy Meal box whoring out crap from the third Ice Age movie...
My plain hamburger. You know they have to make it fresh because they're used to cranking out burgers with everything on them and letting them sit there. One of my friends who used to work in McD's back in high school told me that making plain ones were a pain in the ass - no one wanted to make them as they were ordered. It was easier making their assembly line burgers and letting them sit under the heatlamp until someone bought and ingested them.
Bert's burger. I don't think this was a big Mac since those come with two patties, dont' they? WTF, whatever!
The historic looking (it probably is) Granada Theatre across from the McD's...
Just a few steps down from the Granada was this Gelato place...
We were all craving a taste of gelato...
Here's ours (me and Bert) - Hazelnut and Coffee - It was melting so fast that day!
TC's was mango sorbet with strawberry gelato. Her and her fruity flavors...
Here's a zoom of Mission Santa Barbara. You can't see them in this photo, but there was a newlywed couple posing on the steps. Awww!
We parked a ways off from the Mission. We had to cross a grass field with these gorgeous flower beds filled with roses.
Another shot of the Mission - this time you can see the young married couple posing on the steps! They looked so happy and the photographer was totally making them work it!
The Mission was built through hard labor by the native Americans (specifically the Chumash tribe of Indians). They also had an aqueduct system (more on that here since the Mission was a place where people actually lived and worked.

There were chalk drawings on the ground - Apparently they do this every year. The Italian tradition of sidewalk chalk drawing comes to Santa Barbara each Memorial Day weekend. Artists show their talent on the blacktop pavement in front of Mission Santa Barbara .
I could feel the sense of history from this Mission...the stones looked almost pink. We didn't realize just how huge this mission was until we took the tour.
Here's Bert on the mission steps...
And here is the view inside one of the gift shops before you embark on the self guided tour, should you choose to do so. It's $5 per adult and $1 for kids. The worker there was cool and didn't charge us for TC!
Once you walk through the hallway (seen above), you are in the inner courtyard. There's a really pretty garden in there. There are arrows and ropes that guide you along as well as a pamphlet (they give it to you before you walk in) that describes each major section of the mission.
Evil looking cactus!
This was in the graveyard which is on the mission grounds. TC and I found it morbidly fascinating that this site held about 4,000 bodies! Some were Spaniards but most of them were native Americans. They died quite easily back in those days - no thanks to diseases spread by the Spaniards. Many of the natives did not have immunity to those diseases.
While I found the graveyard fascinating, TC found it a little unsettling, especially after seeing some mausoleum like tombs...
Some of the graves had gates:
You can kind of see some crypts in the background...
The mission is also home to Santa Barbara's Moreton Bay Fig Tree. There's also one of these gigantor trees right by the San Diego Museum of Natural History in Balboa Park. The one in San Diego us much bigger than this one though and it has been fenced off so that the roots wouldn't get messed up.
Entrance by the side of the church. See the three skulls above the door? It indicates that you are in the cemetery...

Church interior:
Tools used to build the mission...

One of the old rooms with a kitchen...
The Lavanderia of the mission. More info on that here and here.

Here's Father Serra again.
More of the church interior. Someone asked me if I knew where confession was at. Like I know!
The Virgin of Guadalupe, a much beloved image, especially to Mexicans. One of my friends collects anything with her image on it.
Next stop! Home!

SF Road Trip - Day 7 - Big Sur and Morro Rock

[Here's another post from a few weeks back~ 7/22]

Ever wondered what a $20 breakfast looks like? You're about to find out at the The Gallery Cafe in Pebble Beach! After a restful night's sleep, we packed up our stuff and got ready for our trip back home. But before all that, my godparents wanted to take us out to breakfast at, ahem, one of their favorite spots...

Ooh, the Gallery...
Not a really good shot...we had a corner table with a view:
The only other Pinoy there was the elderly guy who waited on our table. Everyone else was like Randolph and Mortimer Dukefrom "Trading_Places", one of the greatest films of all time starring a very young Eddie Murphy and a skinny Dan Akroyd. In fact, that's how I sort of felt when we walked in there - like a fish out of water. There were seriously people with these horrid argyle sweaters on and khaki shorts with fucking white socks sitting down and staring at us. Okay, maybe not outright staring, but you could tell they knew we weren't from around there!
This was one fkg expensive breakfast, but luckily, my godparents paid. All of the breakfast items had really lame golf related names, like "Par Four", "Hole in One", "The First Tee",you know, shit like that. I won't even bother writing down the real names for these entrees, but they were along those lines!
Bert had the Omelet with peppers and salsa with a side of hash browns. That was a hugeass omelet - I snaked some of his salsa and sour cream...oh and his hash browns too!
TC had the Pancakes with sides of bacon and hash browns. My ninong had the same thing but instead of bacon, he had a scrambled egg. She ended up eating 1/4 of this. She's only a kid - she can't eat these glutton sized portions!
My ninang had the smoked salmon with capers and bagels with cream cheese. That looked pretty good - but I didn't want to scav off her plate. I'll have to order something similar somewhere else next time. It's this kind of stuff that's "exotic" to me, but it's not what I would regularly want to order.
I had the Croissant Sandwich with bacon, eggs, and cheese...this was not $20 but all the other shit was.
So off we went, back onto the 1, out of the gated confines of Pebble Beach and into the real world once again.
On the 1, there are a lot of turnoffs where you can just park your car on the side of the road and check out the scenery. This was in Carmel I think. The sun was barely out and the cold wind was really whipping our faces fiercely!
TC took this shot of the churning surf below:
Really nice views here...we saw a couple taking photos; they were from New York. We saw them several more times along the way down.
Rocky Creek Bridge...very scenic here!
Another stop off point along Big Sur...
Although this looks like the Rocky Creek Bridge, this was the Bixby Bridge -even though there was no sign indicating that. Based on our maps, this had to be the Bixby Bridge.This was at Ragged Point - one of our stops on the way down - we ended up having our watermelon and strawberry snacks here. Oh yeah, and a bathroom break too! There was another spot further south spot that we went to for a bathroom break which had only Portapotties. I was kind of desperate to pee - but regretted it once I stepped inside the filthy fkg germ infested shithole - I held my breath and had the fastest pee ever and raced outside to breathe in fresh air. I also broke out my antibacterial handcleaner!
After a few hours of driving, we finally got to Morro Bay, which is home to this huge ass rock, known as, (not surprisingly) Morro Rock. I didn't know this before, but Morro Rock is a volcanic plug! Ha ha, she said Plug! This was a pretty clear day and it was also super super hot!!! You can't go around the whole rock, just around a bit of the circumference (like less than 1/3 of it). Lots of people were out that day by the adjacent beach.
View from our car - and yes, that's my foot again. Get used to seeing it. Nail polish - the Deepest of Violets by Sally Hansen, a dark eggplanty purply gothic shade.
Another view of Morro Rock.
There were lots of large birds there that day. I was hoping NOT to get bombed.
The northern edge of the rock, near the beach...
Beautiful ocean!
There's a funny story about the first time we went to Morro Bay to see Morro Rock. Back in 1995, the Central Coast Chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) dedicated a plaque commemorating the first landing of Filipinos (named as "Luzon Indios") in 1587, as part of an exploratory mission by Spanish explorer Pedro de Unamuno. We couldn't, for the life of us, find that damn plaque! The only plaque we saw was the one that designated Morro Rock as a California Historical Landmark (the one where there's the California bear on it). So, on our way out, I needed to use the bathroom. Me and my tiny bladder again. Lo and behold, the plaque was on an inconspicuous rock by the bathroom area! We found it!

Okay, that was in 1996. Fast forward 13 years later. We were trying to find that damn plaque again! We didn't realize that we had passed it up because we were confused by the new bathrooms, which were closer to Morro Rock. We could have sworn the plaque was by the bathrooms. Bert ended up talking to a life guard and he said it was down by the older bathrooms! The new bathrooms, as well as the new boardwalk threw us off. We thought maybe the city got rid of the original plaque! I knew the plaque was there in April because my Knitting Diva friend picture texted me the plaque when she and her family did their SF road trip! I knew it was there dammit!

So, here's a clue for you seekers of Filipino American history - That plaque commemorating the landing of our Pinoy ancestors is located here, in tiny Coleman Park. There's an ancient metal playset for the kiddies and a really dank and ancient shithole of a bathroom.
Here it is - click to enlarge:Complete text of the plaque below:

Historic SiteDuring the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade era from 1565 to 1815 Spanish galleons crossed the pacific between the Philippines and Mexico. On October 18, 1587, the Manila Galleon Nuestra Senora de Esperanza commanded by Pedro de Unamuno entered Morro Bay near here. A landing party was sent to shore which included Luzon Indios, marking the first landing of Filipinos in the continental United States. The landing party took official possession of the area for Spain by putting up a cross made of branches. The group was attacked by native Indians two days later, and one of the Filipinos was killed. Unamuno and his crew gave up further exploration of this part of the coast.

Historical Landmark Declared by theFilipino American National Historical SocietyCalifornia Central Coast Chapter Dedicated October 21, 1995.

These Indios from Luzon (later to be known as Filipinos - no thanks to Crown Prince Felipe of Spain, from which Las Islas Felipinas, or anglicized as The Philippine Islands) were akin to "blue shirts" from Star Trek. You know, those hapless dumbasses that Captain Kirk would send out of the U.S.S. Enterprise to check out the alien worlds they visited. Usually, those blue shirts would end up getting killed while Captain Kirk would be getting it on with hot alien babes!Anyhow, these Luzon Indios checked out the land, a few got killed and the Spaniards went on their merry way invading and spreading their diseases in the New World...

Newspapers in Morro Bay the day after Michael Jackon died. R.I.P. Michael Jackson!
My daughter unfortunately saw these...I didn't mind the squirrel so much as the "Happy Fisherman". She didn't understand why it was funny.
This place is kind of podunk. This was the tourist store where we got some post cards and where those nice nutsack posters were...
TC had to take a photo of this lovely sign...
Our hotel was right off the freeway near the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. Man, that is one gaudy place. We didn't stay there. I remember Bert and I saw it back in '96 and we were the youngest people there. I think we brought the average age down to about 70. Lots of blue hairs...Our dinner was on the main drag in San Luis Obispo...I forgot the name of the street but this Thai place was off that main street. I looked it up through Yelp and what a fkg mistake that was. The restaurant was called Thai Palace. I'm too lazy to post the hyperlinks. It's a prettied up Thai place that caters to rich college students. It's nice inside and all, but the food was mediocre. This was their pad thai with shrimp...
This was a spicy scallop dish with basil and baby corn...slightly better...
I love the serving dish they use for the rice (they use this too at Sang Dao!)...Makes the rice look a little more "special".
We've had such luck this whole vacation - it was sunny and warm almost every day! It was blazing hot at SLO! TC and Bert ended up going to the hotel pool while I chilled out in the room by myself...like the selectively antisocial creature that I am.