Sunday Morning at the Mission

Being back in California gives us opportunities to see many friends who pass through this area because of their work or family ties. (Our little previous corner of Washington state wasn't on the way to anywhere.) This morning a classmate from my high school years in Singapore took me out to brunch at Mission Inn, in Riverside.  My graduating class was all of 9 students, so that was 22% of our class getting together today!

Mission Inn, a former California mission on the Camino Real ("Royal Highway") is just 15 minutes from our house in Riverside. The mission is a truly spectacular hotel now, with several fine restaurants in it.

You approach the Inn through a gateway of bells. We were so focused on breakfast conversation, I didn't take any photos in the restaurant. But after breakfast, we took ourselves on a sightseeing tour of the hotel, at which point the cameras came out to play. The Mission Inn offers guided tours, but we just wanted to wander.

First we took the elevator up to the fourth floor, where we got a lovely view of the buttresses and parapets at the top of the inn.

The covered walkway is a lovely vantage point from which to view the inner courtyard (with outdoor seating for the restaurant) and several other parts of the inn, which includes a Japanese-themed section with the tile roofs and a tower with temple bells on it.

Down in the courtyard the champagne brunch was well underway, with the day warming up nicely enough that the diners didn't even need sweaters. 

As we stood in the covered walkway we saw a Dickensian "English" couple leave their room and come toward us.  She generously offered to pose for a photo, and explained that there was a Dickens festival going on down in the street (we had seen them setting up on our way to breakfast). She also commented cheerfully that coming to the festival each year offers a lovely opportunity to dress up and to stay in the Mission Inn.  Not a bad idea, methinks!

So on we go with our explorations.  There are lovely architectural features everywhere you look at Mission Inn, making it an extremely photogenic place.

Even a window opening provides a place for beautiful lines, colors and textures.  Hmm.  Seems I caught a tad bit of my shadow in that one!

Water features hide around just about every corner you turn, and there are many pretty little courtyards and hallways lined by door to rooms for weary (and wealthy, I'd wager) travelers.

This four-story stairwell in one wing was my favorite architectural feature in the entire inn, although it's very hard to choose. At this spot I felt like Morocco might be nearby. Not that I've been to Morocco, you understand ... yet!

A church/chapel faces in on one of the courtyards.  As far as I could tell the doors weren't open this Sunday morning. Although, come to think of it, we didn't try them to find out.

I love these gorgeous Spanish church doorways on the California missions.  They're so ornate, yet pleasing to the eye.

Up over this doorway looking closer (and you can, too, by clicking on the photo), I took in the detail of the stained glass window. In the square in the middle, I read, "Hast Thou made the mall." 

Say what? I know society has become secularized since the heyday of the missions, but this seemed a bit drastic.  I pondered this, on the verge of pointing it out to my classmate, when it dawned on me.  I had misread it. The wording says, "Hast thou made them all."

Across from the doorway, this lad is forever spitting up. I hear that some folk do that when they have a bit too much of the juice of those grapes he's sitting on.

Not to be at all sacrilegious, but I wondered what happened to the boy Jesus's hand.

I have long been intrigued by trompe l'oeil  paintings, and this, I thought, was a particularly lovely one depicting the inside of the courtyard, which was right behind it. I wondered why the painter chose to paint a scene which you could see "for reals" if you just stepped around this wall.

They have preserved many of the elements of the mission in the Inn, although the building is not currently used primarily for religious services ... with the exception of the many, many weddings that take place there.

There are more things to see in Mission Inn, but you'll just have to drop in there and see them for yourself when you're in town.  My classmate and I wandered on out to the Dickens Festival, and I'll append a few photos here to show what intrigued, horrified and amused me as we ambled along the street festival.

In the "intrigued" category, it was fun to see this chap riding along on his velocipede.  

In the "horrified" category, this banner should speak for itself.

And in the "amused" category, these singing ladies looked quite Victorian... until you looked more closely at the lady who is second from the right. She had a silver piercing through the middle of her nose, with bulbs on the ends of it. Wonder what Charles Dickens would have to say about that?

I'll end this post the way my classmate and I ended our little sojourn in downtown Riverside--with a stop at Casey's Cupcakes. This fine establishment on the back of Mission Inn deserves every bit of its good reputation. My friend chose a carrot cake cupcake, and I chose fresh lemon frosting on lemon cake.

We sat by the fountains in the sunshine and enjoyed our treats thoroughly.

And thus ended a lovely Sunday morning at the Mission.