mosque of Seville, where the Giralda is.) Similarly, he said that he traveled with his father to San José, Costa Rica, by river, which is impossible: San José is at , and is not even close to a navigable river. He embellished it further by adding that they had missed a steamer and had to travel by dugout canoe; there have never been dugout canoes in Costa Rica. He said that he based a dining hall, with multiple wash stations, on a "hospital" in Vic, Spain; there is no such building in Vic. He also made up a prize fight in Australia; he had a lifelong leg injury and could not possibly box. But he said he fought the boxing champion of Australia to a draw after twenty rounds ("he was slow and ... I was fast"), and in a rematch knocked out and probably killed his opponent. He had to escape out the back door with his share of the gate, head for the harbor, and board a ship whose gangplank was conveniently just being drawn up. One wonders what to make of his claim that he was "as good a bricklayer as any man I ever had. I can plaster as well as any plasterer I have seen. I am a fairly good carpenter, a better than ordinary electrician. I know how to wipe a joint in plumbing." Similarly, "I had to go into the nursery business and build a tree-moving machine. What fun it was teaching men how to stucco, teaching others how to cure pip in chickens, clearing jungles, killing land crabs, catching alligators. It was all like a game." Mizner's buying trips He returned to Guatemala for a few months in 1904. His original plan, never implemented, was to buy coffee to sell in the U.S. (This turned later into a nonexistent coffee plantation that he bought.) Instead, realizing how many antiquities were available for modest amounts, especially in Guatemala's abandoned former capital Antigua, he began collecting Hispanic antiquities. He purchased an old monastery – the whole building. "The reason I wanted it was that eight of the side chapels of the church were intact and in each stood, thirty feet high, carved wood altars with heavy gilding." He also returned with a book of sketches of the architectural features of Antigua. This was a turning point in his decision to become an architect. Moving