Mom and my sister Naomi have visited twice before in recent years, but this was my first real visit since a quick Zoo stop about 20 years ago on the way to Disneyland with my four little ones. I was really not sure what to expect, except that I know the ocean is not the Gulf of Mexico and that I much prefer swimming in warmer water. San Diego is a really great beach town that's more like a string of beach villages up and down the coastline. We sampled Ocean Beach, Seaport and Pacific Beach areas during our stay as well as the northernmost Torrey Pines State Park near La Jolla.
Torrey Pines is a lovely, rustic park with a great old lodge on site, which was closed when we were there. We took the online advice and showed up really early, which allowed for easy parking and a crowd-less hike to an overlook from the mountaintop lodge, which serves as the information center. The pine cones are huge and the trees have a prehistoric look to them. We found a great coffee shop on the salt marsh down below and then tooled over to the Balboa Park area.
What a treasure this park is! It sits in the middle of San Diego and is referred to as the Central Park of San Diego. We stumbled on a great arts and crafts festival and mom bought some local art. Then we heard a magnificent organ playing and listened in to one of several practicing artists who were playing. The organ has over 3000 pipes, the largest of which is the diameter of a trash can and 20 feet long, the smallest of which is the size of a pencil.
Then we moved onto a beautiful building that houses the miniature train museum. Dad's father, Paul, was a train engineer, who ran away from home at 16 and ended up shoveling coal on trains that ran guns down into Texas and New Mexico to Pancho Villa. True story. So in honor of them, we went into the train museum. One room was like walking into an explosion of Christmas, there were trains everywhere along with a Where's Waldo sign. We not only found Waldo, we stumbled onto an outdoor exhibition that had a miniature of Balboa Park with two running trains. Mom pressed the buttons to watch those trains run. That's when we learned the history of the park from the nice attendant.
San Diego was a sleepy beach town with some military bases when they finished constructing the Panama Canal. The town powers that be decided to host an exposition to try to attract commercial and tourist interest in the area. As the southernmost port in the US at the time, they were the ones closest to the Canal, so of course this made sense to them. Most of the buildings from the exposition are still standing and house numerous museums, including the Art Museum, Botanic Park and Train Museum. There is also an "International" area that has houses set up from countries around the world and a quaint gift shop whose proceeds support UNESCO.
The trick worked and San Diego was well on its' way to becoming the booming destination we know today. Home of Padres, Shave Ice and Torrey Pines.
We finished with a look at the free Timken art museum, which houses a Rembrandt of all things. http://www.timkenmuseum.org/about/overview/history/ Then it was onto dinner. Mom and Naomi had a fabulous Thai dinner, but as it turns out, the outstanding Santana's Chorizo burrito 2303 Garnet Ave, San Diego, CA 92109, 3 cups of strong coffee and a hot dog at lunch triggered my 3rd ever bout of heartburn and I stayed in. Ugh. And I still highly recommend Santana's Burritos as well as one of the best ever Chili Rellenos I've ever had. All those surfers aren't wrong, they really are terrific burritos. We sampled the Machaca one as well.
Thankfully the heartburn was gone by morning, so we made our Seal amphibious boat tour from Seaport and connected with my oldest and his girlfriend for lunch. They live in LA and it was nice to get to visit with them. Seaport was a pleasant area and I'd like to spend more time there, but the Seal tour was less impressive for mom and sis the second time around. Not enough sea lions and seals and no tour of the naval boats as there had been on a previous tour they had completed.
I enjoyed it because I had nothing to compare it too and there was some great San Diego history shared by our wonderful guide Bret and his Captain Diego. There were brown California Pelicans, tons of seagulls, and we were ON the WATER, which is always a plus when visiting any beach town. Funky hats and pictures to be shared. Bret shared more on the incredible Panama Canal Exposition as well as some insight into an early drought and a desperate city willing to pony up $10,000 to a Mr. Hatfield to make it rain over San Diego.
Mr. Hatfield built a tall tower and apparently seeded clouds. The resulting 40 days of rain caused millions in damages and killed a few people in flooding so the mayor refused to pay up unless Mr. Hatfield agreed to pay the several millions in damages. San Diego is a desert, made green solely on the power of the Colorado River. Appalling news to me, actually. Most of the plants there are imports. The city re-channeled the San Diego river not once but twice, flooding and dredging and shaping the city to it's needs.
We then went to Ocean Beach and toured some antique stores, had some delicious shave ice http://www.wailuashaveice.com/ and the kiddo went body surfing. After a quick dry off at our hotel we went for dinner for mom's birthday at a great place in Pacific Beach that overlooked the water. Terrific food, including Kobe beef sliders with fried pickle slices, sushi, Beef short ribs, and Korean Lamb Lollipops with smoked rice patties. We highly recommend this place. Free parking with dinner. https://www.t23hotel.com/jrdn/ A nice slice of Tiramisu for the birthday girl, who is 82 now, rounded off the evening.
I can't wait to go back and prowl through Old Town, the Gaslight District and see Coronado Island!
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