Random photos taken Sunday, 5.26.2024.
I try to keep the photos in this thread within Los Angeles County, but occasionally, Orange County bleeds in. Like I've mentioned before, I guess this could be a Greater Los Angeles Area thread...
So, tag along with me and my partner to Fullerton and San Juan Capistrano, both in Orange County!
Hehe I thought I would take a lot of photos of San Juan Capistrano, one of the few areas of southern Orange County that I like. It's historic, has the Mission, has the Los Rios neighborhood, which is supposedly the oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood in all of California, having buildings that date to 1794... but instead, we ended up at a wine bar and had some food and plenty of wine. So, let's just say we hung out at the wine bar instead of walking around San Juan Capistrano. But it's OK, we've been to San Juan Capistrano many times and have seen the Mission, the Los Rios District, etc., so I didn't think to walk around and take pictures of it. Been there, done that. We just enjoyed the wines at the wine bar.
The last time we went to San Juan Capistrano, which was a number of years ago, we took public transportation from South Pasadena all the way there and back: We took the Metro A Line (back then called the Gold Line) to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, and then caught the Metrolink all the way to San Juan Capistrano. We didn't do that this time; instead, we drove to Fullerton in Orange County and caught the Metrolink train there to San Juan Capistrano.
Fullerton Station. Both Amtrak and Metrolink use this station.
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Here comes the train! Lots of people wanting to take the train, I guess because it was Memorial Day weekend.
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You can't tell from this picture but the train was crowded, every seat was practically taken, going south.
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Looking out the window, I was a little surprised at how green the natural landscape was, even at this time of year.
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Our stop: San Juan Capistrano.
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Just a short walk from the train station is this wine bar. We decided to go there for lunch and some wine. Hehe we ended up staying there basically the whole time. So convenient from the train.
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Our first of a number of wines.
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Olive tapenade on baguette slices, with parmesan and balsamic reduction dipping sauce.
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Ground beef stew with lentils and pita.
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We hung out at the wine bar for a bit, and then we just conversed for a bit, talked about a bunch of things... and then we both said "Hmm, do we just wanna catch the train back to Fullerton?" We thought of this because the next train back to Fullerton was at 2:05pm, and the next one after that was at 6:03pm. We didn't wanna wait until 6, so we decided to catch the 2:05 train back to Fullerton. We had gotten to San Juan Capistrano around 12:15pm or so, and at this point it was 1:55pm. So we paid the check and started walking back to the train platform.
The train platform borders the historic Los Rios District.
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I snapped a few shots of it; it's really an interesting street, but like I said, we've already explored it a number of times before. I just stayed near the railroad tracks and took some pics of Los Rios Street.
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The train back!
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Not a lot of people on our car, though there was a noisy family with a couple of very small klids some seats away from us.
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Bye San Juan Capistrano! Until another time...
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A few views out the window...
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Back in Fullerton.
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The Fullerton Transportation Center actually has 3 historic train depots on site; aside from the one I took pictures of earlier, there's this one, which now houses an Old Spaghetti Factory.
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We explored a small bit of downtown Fullerton.
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And then we had Greek food for dinner, which was pretty good.
Some retsina.
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Kalamata olive spread.
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Octopus.
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Keftedes.
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Tiropita.
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Then, to walk off our meal, we did just a short walk around downtown Fullerton, and then walked back to the car to go home.
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