The bed at the Waldorf Astoria was fairly comfortable. I mean, you would hope it would be, but they’re clearly cutting corners with the whole s’more thing, so we shouldn’t be so sure. We went to a coffee shop inside the property where we got a pastry and a muffin and brought them back to our room and ate them outside on our little terrace.
At the 11am checkout time, and not a moment sooner, we checked out and took one last lap around the property. Overall it was fine, but it’s not something I’d recommend — especially if one were paying full price, which over Labor Day weekend is over $2500 for a lesser room. Not good value for money in any case. We then proceeded to get our vehicle from the valet. Out front was a Lamborghini, a couple Bentleys, and a Rolls Royce. Finally around the corner appeared a Hyundai Elantra. I’m not sure why it wasn’t out front with the others. K-Pop band, BTS, were brand ambassadors for Hyundai, but such endorsements mean nothing to the excessively rich.
Before we drove all the way back home, I plugged in the address for the nearby mission of San Juan Capistrano. It was built in 1776, one of several missions built in California when it still belonged to Spain. Padres (obviously named for the baseball team just down the road) set out to convert the local indigenous population. Within 50 years, nearly 75% of the indigenous people had been wiped out thanks to germs and all sorts of other goodies that the Spanish brought with them.
It fell into disrepair starting in the early 19th century after an earthquake and Mexico achieved independence from Spain. What kept it going perhaps is the legend of the swallows. The story was a bit odd and the very specific date that the swallows return to the mission (March 19th) seemed equally suspicious. Apparently renovation efforts to the mission itself disrupted the migration patterns a bit but the swallows were eventually enticed back.
In any event, we didn’t see any. I guess it’s not their time. They may have already started their migration back to Argentina. The mission itself was decorated nicely with bougainvillea, and had some nice small gardens and fountains. It was a bit more crowded than I expected with an entire bus of elderly people arriving at one point. One of them was dressed up as a nun, or maybe just was a nun. Unclear.
After we felt we had checked out the mission adequately, we got back in the car and drove the hour back to Playa del Rey. It was a nice little sojourn to the south before all the basic people have their actual vacations over the holiday weekend. Suckers. I myself have some vacation days coming up later in September which I guess is only a couple weeks from now. I hope, dear reader, you can wait until then for more adventures of Bricole.
passports & pepto bismol 