My San Diego overnights are typically short, arriving in the evening and departing early in the morning. During this last four-day trip, I finally had a San Diego overnight of respectable length. Nicole even decided to join me by taking the short hop from LAX on American... in first class. Pretty swanky twenty minute flight for her. I was flying for Delta and coming in from Las Vegas, where I have been running shuttle flights for the last few weeks. I'm not too keen on that airport or its clientele, but that's for another blog post.
We both arrived around noon, and after checking in to the hotel, we began walking around downtown. It's about half a mile from the hotel to the bay, where we found large crowds.
We walked by the USS Midway and all the various charter boats and fishing vessels before reaching this statue entitled, "The Unconditional Surrender." Look, clearly she's not into it. I feel like I read that the photo that inspired this statue was actually staged, which makes it more confusing. She knew there was going to be a picture taken and still was like, "No, I can't even pretend. Not into sailors. Just not feeling this at all. Is it over yet?"
Anyway, from there we cut back in near the gas lamp district, where we encountered more crowds and slow walkers. We walked by the Padres stadium and then back out to the bay. We used the bathrooms at a Hilton near the convention center (sometimes a good bathroom is hard to come by) before relaxing for a bit at a nearby park.
There were various workout stations throughout the park including balance beams, pull up bars, and hanging rings. I impressed Nicole with my Olympic caliber performance at each station. We slowly worked our way back to the hotel, which was a little over a mile away at this point. We stopped briefly at a rooftop bar called Altitude on top of one of the hotels. We didn't stay long. We took in the view and called it good enough. Some of the folks on the roof were quite loud and obnoxious, and we are basically old people who are no longer amused by such things.
We got dinner later on in Little Italy. I had fish n' chips. If that seems off, it's because Little Italy was packed. Waiting two hours to get a table was far less desirable than going to a pub owned by some kiwis. You see, people feel obligated to eat Italian food in Little Italy, but as the area is not yet called Little Auckland, we lucked out. Tomorrow is Memorial Day and both Nicole and I are hoping for an easy nonrev experience back to LA. I'll be heading back from SLC since my deadhead isn't for almost four hours after we are scheduled to land. Hopefully it all goes smoothly.
