Saralee S.
Yelp
It felt like The Emperor's New Clothes. Everyone neglected to inform me that there is no mission here. There are beautiful grounds, a cloistered garden, and some mission bells, but people let's get real - there is no mission! Especially as the missions I am used to are walk right in kind of missions, redolent of the historic past, complete with candles, art, and flowers!
To me, this historic site is also very over-produced. There is a fee to get in (most of the other California missions are free), and you have to exit through the gift shop, reminiscent of the theme of the Banksy film of the same name.
We went courtesy of our stay at the nearby Inn at the Mission, so I didn't feel stung. The other mission I might compare it to is Soledad, which consists of a reproduction building of the chapel, similar to the chapel of Fr. Junipero Serra at San Juan Capistrano. The little chapel is like a mini-mission, and it does have all the elements of other, smaller missions throughout the state,
We did visit the day after Swallow Day, the day that the birds return to the mission each year, and the gardens were in bloom as it was early spring. Lots of people were enjoying the grounds and taking photos. We liked our recorded tour, and horned in on a tour being conducted by a young docent that pointed out the location of the original basilica and a bronze model of the original church. We also saw reproductions of the original bells, and visited the cloistered garden.
We did, literally, exit through the gift store, which was a well stocked store with lots of cute books and items for every age.
The missions are the living history of the way that California was settled and of how people lived. They are also the repository of the earliest art and artifacts in the state, so this visit just fired me up to see what the rest of the missions have to offer!