Pageant of the Masters

This is the main attraction of Laguna Beach nightlife. We arrived 45 minutes early and couldn't find parking! All the street spaces were well gone and the main parking lots were full. (Sorry about the ameri-speak there, but it rubs off!) After doing a Uturn we were lucky to find an office-block lot open with a few spaces left. $10 was a small price to pay for the relief!!
At the ticket office we just went up to the booth, gave our names, and hey presto there they had our tickets in a jiffy. Imagine that!! All the way from Ireland and they knew us!!! Isn't the internet wonderful, all the same.
Inside there was a huge exhibition of art with most of the artists in situ, where you could wander round. Steve had tipped us off to look at the children's art - it was excellent. There was a band playing too, but we arrived for the last tune.
OK, now for the pageant. Well hold on a bit! On the way in to the (open-air) theatre we were offered blankets for $3, cushions $3, and binoculars $9. Since we were wearing long pants (Aidan) and a cardigan (me) we reckoned we wouldn't need the blankets, the cushions shouldn't be necessary, and our seats were close enough to the stage that we didn't need binoculars. 2 out of 3 ain't bad. After 10 minutes we were frozen!!!!!!!!! At that stage it was too late to go back for blankets; it would have been disruptive for everyone else. I'd say there were about 2000 people in the theatre.
So that colours my description of the pageant.
There was a big stage which was the focal point. The theme of this year's show was make-believe, so the obvious art to go for was art related to fairies. It opened well with a scene from Peter Pan; Peter and Wendy flying over the rooftops of London. The scene included two actors suspended above London. Next our eyes were diverted to the shrubbery to the left of the stage where a "statue" of Peter Pan, from Kensington Gardens was live before our eyes. Beautifully rendered, and the actor was stock-still. More tableaux followed with more statues now and then. The best of these featured children in a scene called Trick-or-treating in the Burbs by an American artist. What disappointed me though was that once you got a glimpse of the actors in the scene, they faded back and were replaced by a still image. While we watched the still image, the orchestra played appropriate music.
The orchestra were excellent - nothing like live musicians to complement a show like this.
With make believe, you are eventually going to find dragons! These were spectacularly done, puffing "fire" over our heads in time with the musical accompaniment.
However the overarching memory we will have will be the COLD!!!. I guess that if we had been riveted by the show we would have investigated the possibility of getting blankets at the interval, but to be honest we had had enough by then so we left. But we were the only ones leaving.
Driving back along the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) we noticed how quiet everything was at 9.30pm. People were out to eat, but very little browsing or strolling around and no pubs to be seen. We saw signs for Live Music at 6pm here and there.  Considering that most people are up about their business by 6am that's understandable.
On that note: Cathy & Kevin are coming here with breakfast tomorrow morning! They live over an hour away, but will be here by 8am with a cooked breakfast for us!!!! Kevin has to be somewhere for work at 11, and needs to drive some distance there, so 8 am was agreed. (At this stage I think we'll have had our walk by then!!!) Still coming to grips with this early, healthy lifestyle!! They are bringing a map of California and they are going to put a bit of a shape on us regarding this holiday!!
On Saturday they're taking us to a winery. Cathy is horrified that Aidan doesn't like cheese - How can he taste the wine?? He'll show her!!