Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: USA Road Trip 2011
City life
I
got up at 0730 after a great night's sleep. In retrospect that seems
quite early, considering the previous evening's consumption, but I
didn't want to snooze my way through my weekend in San Diego. We
walked to Bruce's favourite neighbourhood coffee shop, Claire de
Lune, for a light breakfast. I found it fascinating just
watching the city - or at least, North Park - coming to life on a
Saturday morning. It was all so different from the places that I had
visited on my road trip, and so much more cosmopolitan than the
small city in central Scotland that I called home. The coffee shop
itself proved to be a popular spot, although a new Starbucks
directly across the street looked as though it might pose a
commercial threat. We wandered back to Bruce's apartment to pick up
the car, noticing that the streets were already very much busier
than when we had set out.
The
next item on the agenda was there for my benefit: a visit to Fry's
electronics store, easily the largest such warehouse-type store that
I had ever seen. My mission to buy a new set of noise-cancelling
headphones was successful and, although it didn't seem all that long
since breakfast, we then drove to China Max in the Kearny
Mesa district for a delicious dim sum lunch. It was nice to see that
the slight morning mist - enough to drop the temperature by a few
degrees - had now burned off and it looked likely to be a glorious
afternoon. The restaurant itself was extremely busy and hugely
popular with local Chinese people, which is always a good sign. The
food lived up to expectations.
We then made the short drive to Balboa Park, an area that I had visited several times previously but of which I never tire. The former exhibition site contains many museums, mostly along the central El Prado boulevard, which are in a striking mixture of Spanish and Spanish-Colonial architecture and which invariably look stunning in the southern California sunshine. The park is also a centre of the performing arts and contains a number of gardens as well as the world-class San Diego Zoo. We concentrated on the El Prado section, in particular visiting the new home of the Museum of Photographic Arts.
After
an opportunity to relax back at base for a while, we walked to
dinner at a local and somewhat German-sounding sausage and beer
restaurant, which rejoiced in the thoroughly Anglo-Saxon name of
The Linkery. Once again, it proved to be a hugely popular spot
and indeed, all of the surrounding streets seemed to me to be
bursting with life as people were out enjoying themselves on a
Saturday evening. I enjoyed my unusual meal, although I can't say
that I recognised the sausage as a Bratwurst, which is what
it was meant to be. What struck me about the walk back to the
apartment was how, in the space of a couple of blocks, all the
hubbub was left behind and the immediate neighbourhood became one of
peace and calm.
We spent the rest of the evening watching DVDs and in between, catching snippets of the huge media build-up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11, which of course was due to take place the next day.