Brand Park
Fountain, originally uploaded by lavocado@sbcglobal.net.
There's a beautiful park across the street from the Mission San Fernando Rey. I didn't go into the mission itself; I just looked at it from the park. The missions are probably the best known and most visited historical sites of coastal California. School children still make scale models of them. You can get a kit for this at Michael's.
They lay in ruins while the yankees took over, but then were discovered as tools of promotion for real estate and tourism. They were restored, romanticized and used as a basis for an architectural style. The Catholic Church owns most of them, and still uses them as churches. I haven't toured a mission in many years. In my childhood, women had to wear head coverings to enter. You could buy a scarf at the gift shop if you didn't bring you own. The interiors were cool and dark. Murals and statues were described by reverent tour guides, but they looked rather depressing to me.
This mission is named after Ferdinand III of Spain who was canonized. He was king of Castile and Leon. He fought the Moors and recaptured Andalusia, where he established religious orders. He lived 1199-1252 and was canonized in 1671. That's who the San Fernando Valley and many other places around the world are named after.
The Garden contains roses and this i
There is this statue of Junipero Serra and a young Indian.
The Spanish gained converts by kidnapping children so their parents would end up at the mission too, according to early Angeleno Hugo Reid.
There are the fanciest anti-homeless benches I have ever seen. Don't get me started on how much I hate those.
Farther from the mission, there are benches which don't exclude the homeless.
