This morning (5th) we headed to Balboa Park which is the main urban park of San Diego. It borders onto San Diego Zoo, but we don’t like zoos so we didn’t go in there. Some of the buildings in Balboa Park date from the Expo in 1915, and they are all in a Spanish / Mexican style, kind of yellow ochre in colour. They include many museums, one of which (The Museum of Us) has a tower. Margaret suggested that we go up the tower to see the view, and we were not disappointed as we could see all around San Diego and into Mexico, which is only 10 miles away. There are also lots of open spaces and cafés, and we sat down to listen to the large outdoor Spreckels organ, which was playing tunes from West Side Story. Next stop was the Japanese tea garden - for a cup of tea of course!
Back in the car we drove to La Jolla (which is strangely enough pronounced La Hoya!) It’s a very popular and busy beachside area of San Diego and we grabbed a quick lunch and went for a walk. We saw lots of pelicans which were just over the fence from the path, which was brilliant. However what was less brilliant was the smell of their copious poop, which was atrocious. I was glad that we visited La Jolla but my heart is definitely in Coronado where I think that the beach is much nicer.
Later on, we visited the iconic red-roofed Hotel del Coronado for pre-dinner drinks, it’s known as “The Del” to aficionados like ourselves! (Actually we didn’t know that until we read it on the cocktail menu!) “The Del” is where the exterior shots of the 1958 film “Some Like It Hot” was filmed, and it does look very striking with its circular central building and its attractive gardens. And dinner was in the very popular Henry’s restaurant near our hotel. Somehow it seemed a bit less convivial when we were there, than it had appeared when passing it on other evenings. That cannot have been the influence of our merry little group because we had a delicious dinner and a fine time.
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