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Mission San Juan Capistrano

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Mission San Juan Capistrano bellsDuring the recent visit of a friend from New Zealand, I took him to see the Mission San Juan Capistrano. The mission was founded in 1776 by Franciscan priests as the 7th of 21 missions spread throughout Mexico's Alta California (modern-day Southern California) and connected by the Camino Real, Spanish for the Royal Road or the King's Highway.

The ruins of "The Great Stone Church" (which collapsed in an earthquake in 1812) are one of the main highlights of the mission. In addition, the Fr. Serra Church, named for Junipero Serra, is the oldest standing structure in California that is still in use today.

The Mission is celebrated in Leon Rene's song "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano" which recounts the annual spring return of the swallows to Southern California, an event traditionally observed at the Mission San Juan Capistrano every March 19 (Saint Joseph's Day).

In 1984, a modern church called the Mission Basilica was constructed just north and west of the Mission compound, patterned after the old stone church, but twenty percent larger.

Slideshow photos of the Mission San Juan Capistrano

Map and directions to Mission San Juan Capistrano

Wikipedia: San Juan Capistrano Mission
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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm
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Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 — © John Corney 2026 This one has a real backstory, and I'd like to tell it properly. An Auckland Sighting On one of my annual visits home to New Zealand, I was walking through central Auckland — at the corner of Queen Street and Karangahape Road (K Road, as everyone calls it) — when a small yellow car went past me and stopped me mid-stride. It was a beautifully kept Austin A35, one of the little British runabouts that were everywhere in New Zealand when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties. Driving it was a woman of a certain age with the confident bearing of someone who had been driving that same car, or one like it, for decades. She looked entirely at home behind the wheel. She belonged to the car and the car belonged to her, and neither of them was in any hurry to change. If you know Auckland, that particular corner will register: Queen Stree...
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Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

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Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026 Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now. She has taken up flying. A Brief Recap for New Readers If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland , waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn. Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart pa...
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