EXPLORING THE CITY

Kendrah and I are excellent travel partners. When we first got here, we didn't have a map, or a home (we were still living in the motel at this point) but we were totally game for exploring the city. Especially since we knew that to get back to the motel, all we'd have to do was to follow the airplanes.

I'm serious.

They landed about a 1/2 mile away, even though it sounded like they were landing on the roof.

And did I mention the motel was sandwiched between a busy street and an even busier train track? Why the engineers felt the need to blast the whistle every time they passed behind the building is beyond me. But they did. Didn't exactly make for a restful night, that's for sure.

Alright, enough about the friggin motel. A sketch-bag place like that only deserves so much room on the page.

We set about exploring the area around San Diego, as well as the city itself. It's huge -about 1 million people, but it's a city of "bedroom communities" as per the tourist brochures -I'm not making this shit up, that is actually how they describe the city. AKA full of suburbs. That makes it pretty easy to explore the downtown area -not really that big, considering the size of the city, as well as the pier/marina that surrounds the city.

The city skyline, from across the bay on Coronado Island

The USS Midway

One of the cruise ships that docks along the harbor

MISSION BEACH

This place is about a 15 min drive from downtown, where we were staying at the time. It's huge and popular, especially with tourists in the summer. There is also a fairly large boardwalk with lots of surf shops, and even some carnival rides. We found out later that this beach is entirely man-made, with imported sand from god-knows-where. Pretty impressive :)


LA JOLLA

Just north of the city is the town of La Jolla. It's cute and tiny and totally caters to an outdoor lifestyle. We took a drive there to take a look at their beaches and caves (where we are going kayaking tomorrow!) and some of the restaurants and shops, just off the beach. We'll also be trying the snorkeling, which is said to be amazing. I'll keep you posted.