Activity Summary
Sunday 26th march - Day 206
Drive to San Diego
Balboa park; UN countries, organ concert & explore
Monday 27th March - Day 206
San Diego walk:
Downtown San Diego, Gaslamp quarter
San Diego convention centre
Harbour walk & lunch
Harbour / Seaport village
Little Italy
Old town
Fried fish taco
Pacific beach & Mission beach walk
Sunset Cliffs
Summary
San Diego
It was refreshing to be in a city that wasn’t such a shit hole. LA is terrible and we weren’t much of a fan of San Fran but San Diego was just a lot more chill and this made our time here a whole lot calmer, for once in a US city.
Pacific and Mission beaches are great for surfing and chilling in hot weather (not this time mind) and there was plenty of fun and quaint things to do for a few days.
Accommodation
San Diego - ITH Beach Bungalow Surf Hostel
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £30
The hostel was a weird eclectic mix of rooms and people. Backpackers, Uber drivers, lifers and drug addicts (was one shouting the room down of some friends we made) are all smushed in together. The kitchen was tiny with no workspace so was just very stressful to use but they served some decent pancakes.
The hostel was pretty run down but it was right on the beach so it gave good views, great location and most of the people were nice.
Diary
[Continued]
It was an early Sunday morning drive to San Diego for us so thankfully there wasn’t too much traffic leaving LA. It seemed we were pretty lucky most of the time and all the drama consistently was on the other side of the road each time, this time there being a 6 car pile up most likely from a result of no American being able to obey the speed limit or leave stopping distances. Annoyingly this did slow down our side as the morons who wanted a show would crawl past.
We did find this gem in the supermarket however. Who doesn't love a plastic wrapped, ready to microwave potato. No words.
Our first stop in San Diego was Balboa park. It was a bit of a pain parking as it was hella busy being a Sunday and the park being surprisingly close to the city. We managed to get a free spot in the overspill car park for the zoo (love a parking win) which had a short walk to the park.
The park was happening. There was an area with a load of small houses dedicated to various countries from around the world which was created from an EXPO in the 1930s about different countries with each house showcasing a countries culture, design, food, history etc. The England one was obviously all monarchy because that's apparently all we care about, plus a bit of Harry potter and LOTR.
Nicola visited Sweden, Israel, Iran, Korea, Germany and India to name a few while Luke got bored quickly and just waited outside listening to the main activity in the park square. There were Nowruz celebrations (Iranian New Year) with Iranian culture being celebrated by Iranian Americans by way of music, dance, food and art. The biggest theme of the event was the championing of Women’s rights and freedom.
Turns out San Diego has a permanent outdoor giant organ that gets a spin every Sunday afternoon for free. Today's theme was Bach so we got some Dracula-esque tuneage before we got bored and moved on. The organ as a standalone instrument didn’t quite do it for us and Nicola found it fascinating that Luke’s secondary school had an organ built into the school hall so all of this was nothing new for him, unlike her.
The rest of the park were museums, market stalls and lovely mediterranean style architecture so we just spent the afternoon strolling around and soaking in the happy non-LA vibe.
We got to our hostel on Pacific beach, checked in to the surfer vibey place and parked the car a little down the street rather than pay $20 a day for the hostel spaces. The area seemed alright and fortunately there were no car problems over the 2 days.
The hostel runs events most nights and we were expecting a BBQ on the deck overlooking the beach. After spending time at the hostel doing laundry and just killing time, when nothing happened we found out there was a reshuffle and we were starving. We very nearly ordered Domino's pizza but when the initial cost started creeping up on the order with potential service charge we got fed up and cooked basic bitch pasta. Sense won out.
We ended up watching Guardians of the Galaxy after dinner snuggled up in Nicola’s top bunk as we were shattered and would have quite easily passed out before the end of the film had the evening hostel activity not kicked into life.
From about 9pm the tunes started pumping. Fair play to them, it was a great sound system but it was effectively next to our bed on the other side of the wall and we could hear everything through our headphones. Once the movie finished Nicola had a bit more energy so rather than fail at trying to sleep, we ventured out to the deck.
The music sounded like it ought to be a massive rave but in reality there were about 4 people chilling and smoking weed (just everywhere in California hostels but not something we are interested in). The music was confusingly loud for such a lifeless scene and only served the purpose of keeping 90% of the hostel awake. We sat for a while on the deck accepting we’d never be able to sleep with the music playing before it eventually stopped at 11pm.
Luke reckons he could have slept better with the pumping tunes rather than the absolute permanent foghorn that was collapsing his eardrums on the top bunk next to his top bunk. This was the worst snorer either of us had heard and unfortunately for Luke this happened to be pretty close to his bed. Nicola, being 5m further to Luke’s left, seemed to be able to suffer far less. It was an old lone dude and on his front, side or back he could not stop.
The worst part was that people all thought it was Luke snoring. Well at least Christine, the mid 40s Uber driver under Nicola did anyway.
So the best sleep Luke got was when Foghorn got up relatively early and there was calm for what should have been a few hours. This was ruined by the 7 strong French group packing their bags and talking as if it wasn’t 8am. Another negative added to the growing list against French travellers in our eyes.
The hostel provided a free pancake breakfast so we made use of that in the morning, despite the stress of the unorderly queue that was just downright offensive to us Brits. We ended up chatting to an Aussie couple, Eddie & Ally, finally finding another travelling couple like us. Away for a year and a half and just turned 30, it was like finding the Aussie version of ourselves. We had a great time chatting with them and arranged to meet up a bit later.
We wanted to explore San Diego so initially drove into the city to park up, realised it was extorniate and then simply went back to the free zoo overspill and walked in. San Diego, while having homeless problems, had a completely different vibe to San Fran and LA so walking in and around the city had minimal stress for the first time in what felt like a while.
Walking through to the Gaslamp quarter was pretty unexciting but it was nice to see that San Diego had what seemed like a core area for restaurants and bars unlike elsewhere we had been (San Fran was all over the place).
Luke needed a slash and once seeing the state of the public toilet, likely used for illicit activities, we tried our luck in the much nicer San Diego convention centre. We were stopped by an old events lady, said we just wanted a look around citing complete innocence and when told it was tags only Luke charmed his way into the restroom. She was a lovely lady, told us all about the 175k strong San Diego Comic-Con carnage and also gave us some great advice to get to the harbour for our continued walk.
Once at the harbour and surrounded by rich person boats (including a bathroom for members only) we had some lunch on a bench in the sun before continuing on.
A short way away is the Seaport village so we had a quick look around the quaint area and continued along the coastal path. There were some big ol ships, a ridiculously huge aircraft carrier and a submarine. Go war hungry ‘Merica.
Lastly we looped through Little Italy which was a lovely neighbourhood with al fresco dining and Nicola was very happy with the potted plant decor.
We walked through the not so interesting / nice part of town to get to the car and drove over to the Old Town. Luke did nearly run over some kids at the equivalent of a zebra crossing. Woopsie.
The Old Town was lovely, if not a bit stereotypical for the tourists. It had an old Western style theme to the larger area that was cool to look around but the best part was a sort of market square that had a number of gift shops, food joints and drinks area while playing some banging Latin tunes. We had a walk around, looked at the gift shops where Nicola professed she wanted to buy loads of things before sitting down and soaking up the peaceful atmosphere.
We drove back to Pacific beach, parked up and Luke decided he wanted to walk down from Pacific beach to Mission beach. Nicola was less enthused given we had just walked around San Diego all day and we would be socialising in the evening so we went the short way to a great Taco place called ‘La Playa’ and got an absolutely banging fried fish taco. We could live with the $5 price tag and would see us through till dinner post sunset.
Luke continued his walk down to Mission beach alone which actually was completely uninspiring bar people watching. They clearly love to roller skate here. Mission beach was much busier but also seemed fairly tacky so he just walked there and back while Nicola rested.
We met up with Eddie & Ally and drove over to the Sunset Cliffs where we sat, watched and chatted away for a couple of hours. It was nice but sadly that perfect sunset was ruined by some distant clouds.
Once back at the hostel we had our leftover pasta and continued chatting with our new hostel fwends. They were kind enough to share their Barefoot wine with Luke (California version - hilariously they have an Aussie version and we were all greatly confused about the brand's location). We also had other hostel guests come and go from our conversation including Christine. It was all in all just a very nice evening.
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