The hub of Southern California is Los Angeles, which in a generation has expanded from a sleepy little half-Spanish pueblo of a few thousand to a metropolis of half a million, with a taste for the latest in everything and the money to indulge it. It is the natural center from which to do one’s sightseeing, though Pasadena, adjoining it on the north, is almost as convenient and, indeed, preferred by many who are not in a hurry and prefer surroundings more rural. Pasadena is a little city of 40,000, beautifully situated on a shelving mesa at the base of the Sierra Madre and overlooking the fertile San Gabriel Valley. It is nationally famous for its numerous fine estates and the winter residences of wealthy Easterners; but outside of that it possesses mile upon mile of tree-lined streets where modest homes of the bungalow type look out from a setting of vine and shrub and flower. Each New Year’s Day the city becomes the objective of tens of thousands of visitors to view the Tournament of Roses, an outdoor fiesta whose distinctive feature is a street floral pageant. From Los Angeles lines of transportation radiate to all points of interest. You have your pick of steam railways, electric lines, auto-stages and ocean steamers. Hundreds of miles of first class, hard-surfaced roads make Southern California a motorist’s paradise, and automobiling is here so notable a feature of tourist life that, if possible, the traveler should make provision for it when packing his pocket book. Public automobiles are abundant and the prices reasonable enough, from $1.50 per hour upward, with special rates for trips. If you are able to club with others for a car, you may find this the cheapest form of travel. Maps and specific information as to drives may be had at offices of the Automobile Club of Southern California.[97] For those who do not care for motoring or find it too expensive, most of the desirable points are reached by electric and steam lines, or by auto-stages. There are several daily excursions scheduled by the Pacific Electric Railway, which afford at a minimum of expense a satisfactory means of getting a comprehensive idea of Southern California. One of these, to Mount Lowe (a prominent peak of the Sierra Madre), may be substituted for the automobile drive up Mount Wilson. The visit to San Juan Capistrano Mission may be made by train, the railway station being close by. There is a resident priest and religious services are regularly held in one of the restored rooms. The Mission was founded in 1775, and the church part—now a ruin, the result of an earthquake in 1812—marked in its prime the high-tide of Mission architecture in California.