A friend had organized a homeschooling tour of the Deering Banjo company, the biggest banjo producer in the United States. It's always interesting to learn how things are made!

Then, we headed to Old Town, a San Diego neighborhood considered as the “birthplace” of California. San Diego is the site of the first permanent Spanish settlement in California. It was here in 1769, that Father Junipero Serra came to establish the very first mission in a chain of 21 missions that were to be the cornerstone of California’s colonization.

We visited the historic buildings La Casa de Estudillo, one of the oldest surviving examples of a typical large Spanish-Mexican U-shaped one-story town house in California. We then walked around Heritage Park where several of San Diego’s most notable Victorian homes have been relocated and authentically restored to their original splendor.

We all had dinner together on the terrace of a Mexican restaurant and celebrated another great week of traveling and exploring.