Sweltering?

If there had been something soft next to me, I would have tossed it at the television tonight. Lynn and I had spent the day on Coronado Island and had come home and were relaxing before she took me to the airport. The news was on and the weatherman was giving a weather report. "We're going to have to put up with these sticky, sweltering temperatures for 3 more days," he said.

Do you know what the high in San Diego today was? 78! He's complaining that he has to "put up with" 78 degree weather and I'm flying home to 100 degree weather! We don't even have a low of 78 these days! Those folks in San Diego don't know what a good thing they have!

It was actually a gorgeous day. It was clear and sunny, warm, but with a constant breeze to cool you off. Just the perfect day for the beach. We weren't going to be beach per se, but we were going to Coronado Island, just over the bridge from San Diego.

(This is actually returning to San Diego, but I didn't
take pictures going--it looks the same in either direction!)

The main reason I was interested in going to Coronado was to see the 123 year old Del Coronado Hotel. If you've seen Some Like it Hot or Somewhere inTime, that delightful time travel romance starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, you have seen this beautiful old hotel.

There was a historical display in the basement that was really kind of interesting to read through.

I loved that the 1915 "bridal suite" came with twin beds!

There was also a sweet story about one of the hotel's waitresses, who would take menus home for her kids to cut up and use as paper doll clothes.

And as for the choice of this hotel as a setting for Some Like it Hot, the hotel was in financial decline during the 1950s and when director Billy Wilder was looking for a location, he found out it would rent cheap! There was also a menu from 1963 with nothing on the menu (including crab) more than $2.50 and one of the dessert choices was "cling peaches in syrup."

Lynn had dressed in clothes a bit too warm for the day, so we stopped in one of the hotel's shops so she could try to find something more comfortable, including new shoes.

What the fat lady does when her tiny friend
shops in a skinny lady's store!

She bought a blouse and cooler pants, but still hadn't found shoes, but then we found the perfect stop for the two of us.

She bought shoes and I bought a card with a photo that I absolutely loved on it.

When we later stopped at a pizza restaurant for lunch, Lynn went to the ladies' room and came back transformed and cool in her new duds.

We walked back to the car and then drove around looking at houses on Coronado for awhile. All gorgeous, or course. Probably a little shack would run you >$1 mil. But nice to look.

We came back home to rest up and listen to the weather persons tell us how hot it was (I was sitting in the middle of the most lovely breeze at the time!). Then we finished our leftover meals from the last couple of days and finally packed me up in her car for the ride to the airport.

The flight home was uneventful and, though it was a completely full flight, I had a low number on Southwest, so I had no trouble getting a prime seat. Dogs were very happy to see me home again.

It was definitely a quick weekend, but so nice to have some time to spend with Lynn.

Cultural Desert

On hearing how much I was enjoying San Diego, someone on Facebook joked that it was a "cultural desert." Guess this must have been someone who has never been to Balboa Park, our destination for today.

In the morning, after breakfast, Lynn set out to examine the possibilities for a day in the park, with the help of her two canine assistants.

(It's easy to see in what high esteem the furry people here are held.)

After some disagreements with "Matilda," the GPS voice in Lynn's car, we got to Balboa park and were presented with such a plethora of cultural diversities that they didn't all fit on the map I was trying to decipher. I don't know how many museums there are in the park, but everything from the tiny camera club museum to the large natural history museum, and just about everything in between, including the zoo, which I recognized from my trip here with Peggy in 2000.

There were any number of street entertainers.

The froufrou on the buildings was definitely over the top.

We were looking through the many museums for the Museum of Photographic Arts, which we eventually found sandwiched in the same building as the Museum of San Diego History, across from the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science.

It was a fabulous museum, tracing the history of photography. I was struck over and over again the power of photographs to capture an emotion that you can't capture in quite the same way with a painting. A photo captures that one split second in time when the subject may have been caught off guard and when the real essence of that person leaps off the print.

I was sorry photos weren't allowed, but certainly understand why they weren't, though there were many photos I wished I could copy just to be able to show what I meant.

A photo of Groucho Marx, for example. Totally candid and I almost didn't recognize him. Or a picture of a woman in a camp in Tanzania in the early 1900s, holding her baby. The picture on her face showed the total depression she was feeling and I found myself wondering what ever became of her. There was a picture of two very posh ladies draped in furs, wearing tiaras, alighting from a limo, with what had to have been an onlooker, the expression of disgust on his face evident.

And there was a sad quartet of photos of Marilyn Monroe, 3 taken for a Life magazine spread at the start of her career and a candid taken a short time before death, the ravages of fame so clear on her face.

I was very sorry to have to pass up a photo of a snowflake, taken very early in the history of photography, by a man who snapped individual snowflakes on black velvet...and had to take the pictures within 15 seconds before the flakes melted, to prove that no two snowflakes are alike.

I'm not sure what our own little quartet of pictures taken in a photo booth in the gift shop says about us, but we had to step into the booth and give it a try. (I suspect it says that we were having a good time!)

We finally left Balboa Park without having visited the Art Institute or the Air and Space Museum, or Museum of Man or the Timken Museum of art, or the Japanese Museum, or the Centro Cultural de la Raza, or the botanical garden or any one of a host of other museums just in Balboa Park alone. We didn't see the Youth Symphony Conservatory, Junior Theatre, Civic Youth Ballet, or Civic Dance Arts.

Definitely not a cultural wasteland!

We came home to feed and walk the dogs and then off to Old Town for dinner. Fortunately we had reservations at Cafe Coyote, one of the best Mexican restaurants in town, because the line to get in was very long.

But we were showed to our seat immediately and we contemplated our dinner choices over a nice big Cadillac Marguerita.

Dinner was fabulous, but too big, and we both brought home doggie bags.

We came home and collapsed in front of the TV. The last thing I remember was starting to watch The Medium and waking up at 9:30 to a completely dark house, with Lynn and the dogs already in bed.

It's been a full, but such a fun day. Sad to realize that I will be writing my next entry from home, as I leave in about 24 hours to fly back to Sacramento.

San Diego

It is a little after midnight and the house is quiet. Lynn and the three little dogs (2 pomeranians and a poodle) have gone upstairs to bed. I'm sitting here surrounded by fans blowing cool air on me. The temperature here tonight was in the mid-70s. I could learn to love San Diego!

I had a late afternoon flight, since Lynn had to work. Walt took me to the airport around 3p.m. and we remarked on how strange it was for him to be dropping me off at the airport, since it's usually the other way.

It wasn't all that long a wait before the plan (which had landed early) began boarding passengers. I was able to get the window seat in the third row, which pleased me very much.

The flight seemed to...well...fly by. Before I knew it, the coast off San Diego was coming into view.

(please note those white things are CLOUDS, which means CLOUD COVER which means COOL TEMPERATURES!! As it is predicted to be 100 in Davis today, even the TSA woman in Sacramento told me she was jealous of my being able to fly to San Diego!)

Lynn met me as I came through the screening area and we loaded my stuff in the car and headed for Seaport Village, where we had reservations for dinner. We were early, so we wandered around the gift shops. Lynn bought some ceramic mushrooms for her yard, I took pictures of a delightful carousel, which originally dated from 1895

The animals were all beautifully restored and it made me want to be a kid again!

The Village was really fun to walk around. Most of the street vendors and performers had left, but I loved this woman interacting with a little girl. So sweet!

And this guy was there with several birds.

We ate at the Harbor House, right near the bay.

We ate upstairs and had a wonderful view of the water, while we enjoyed our crab cakes, mojito, and Australian lamb chops. All were amazing, as was the view.

We stopped at a gourmet cupcake shop to pick up a couple of cupcakes for dessert, then came home to walk the dogs, have another glass of wine, eat our cupcakes and chat.

I could get used to this!