DISNEY! (part 1 of 2)
Hi there, everyone.
Thursday August 2 we got up pretty early (we've adjusted to this time zone now, just in time for it to feel too early to get up) to get to the Disney parks by 7:30. They are only 15 miles away but with the traffic around here, it took us probably 45 minutes to get to the parking lot, and then another 10 minutes to take the bus, then through the bag inspection lines and then the metal detectors.... Wow. I had read about it and we were prepared, but boy, they are thorough.
We used a thing called RideMax, which is a service that charges $15 for 90 days, and allows you to put in the date, which rides you want to go on, how many times each, your time of first ride, your walking pace, and whether you will be using the FastPass system (choose digital or physical), and plugs all these factors into a giant Disneyland algorithm to figure out how to do the parks. We tried it for California Adventure first (since that's the first park we did) and although we deviated slightly from the plan due to very short lines on some things, it worked pretty well. We ended up getting the digital Maxpass, which allows you to order Fastpasses on your phone (you can get a new one every 55 minutes or something like that) as well as providing access to all the photos, included in the cost. I was initially hesitant to add that, because it was $10/person/day, but I think it was wall worth it, in hind sight. I would definitely recommend the RideMax subscription as well, plus an e-book of "tips and tricks" (that was an extra $7) which served us well.
Thursday at Disney California Adventure (hereafter called DCA), we started with getting a Fastpass (FP) for a popular ride and headed for Pixar Pier. The Incredicoaster (what they're calling the big roller coaster there now that it's Pixar Fest) was... not open yet. So we did the Silly Symphony Swings (which were like the swings I enjoy at the fair, but on steroids), which had no line (so we thought it was closed as well, until we asked) and headed for Grizzly River Run, which was... also not open yet. So we did Soarin' Around the World, which was SO COOL, but ended abruptly because a kid's hat fell out of the under seat storage (which I found out by eavesdropping on the cast member who was talking to the family to whom it happened). I wanted to see how it really ended (I think we were close when they stopped it) and there was still no line so I asked the girls if we could do it again, and we did. It was a virtual ride with some movement but had the breeze and the smells as well as the movement, visuals and sound. I really liked it.
After that we had a FP for Guardians of the Galaxy- MISSION BREAKOUT in the Hollywood section. That was fun but mostly terrifying, being jerked up and down at speed with sudden stops. I think I'm too old for this kind of thing. The Guardians of the Galaxy visuals were fun but too short, and then the ride was over. I wouldn't wait more than 20 minutes for it - wait, what am I saying? I wouldn't wait for it at all, because I didn't like it that much. The kids loved it, though. The exits are very clever, funneling you out through the gift shop. There was some Marvel stuff there - Captain America shirts and Avengers pins and books and stuff. I bought a baby Groot because it was SO CUTE, but I didn't buy it until later (went back for it).
After that we went on the Grizzly River Run, which is a water ride in a circular "car." I got one of the seats next to the opening, and I was the destination for most of the water - the thing rotates as it travels, so we never knew which end would be down on the hills. I was pretty much soaked by the end, but the day was already warm, and we had planned ahead, wearing our swim togs under our quick-dry clothes, and packing our important things in plastic zip bags. Oh, the cleverness of us.
The Incredicoaster was open by then, with a 70-minute wait, and I knew I would not do well on that, so I let the girls wait in line and ride it while I walked around, shopped, let my clothes dry, and wandered over to the lockers to get our food so we could eat. It was lunchtime by the time they got off the ride (11:40). We found a shady table and ate the sandwiches we had brought. The Disney parks are pretty good about water, having cups of ice water ready for the asking at pretty much any fast food joint, so we refilled our water bottles often.
We had a FP for Radiator Springs Racers, which was a Cars-themed ride. The Cars Land was pretty clever - I'll probably say it again, but Disney does environments/ambiance VERY well - and we got on to the ride in a very few minutes. It was a really popular ride - the RideMax program was very good about letting us know which FP to get in which order, because the more popular rides had FP availability pushed out several hours. We did some shopping in there as well. We got another Grizzly River Run pass for mid-afternoon (it was pretty hot by then) and my younger kid got the splash seat that time, though we all got wet. We changed our clothes after that - bless the $10/day Disney locker - and wandered around some more, looking at all the increased ride times for things we had stood in line for mere minutes, and smirked to ourselves. :)
By 4:30 we were really tired so we packed it in, picked up our stuff from the locker and headed home, which took almost an hour. We took a couple of wrong turns, partly because my navigator wasn't paying strictest attention in places, but mostly because the roads here are REALLY WEIRD. For example, on the highways, they add two lanes on the right, then make all traffic merge left as they cut them off again, so one is constantly merging to the left. I vaguely remember that from when I lived in San Diego in 1990, wondering as I headed toward LA whether I was going to drive into the Pacific from all the merging right. We got home just before 7 and we were all so tired we didn't eat dinner, even though all we'd had to eat was a turkey sandwich, pretzels and some ice cream all day. We were all in bed by 9 and sleeping deeply.
And that's a good place to end for the time being.
cheers,
wb
Saturday, August 4, 2018
Catching up - again.
Today is Saturday, and it's been a busy week. Monday we were still in the San Diego area and we went to the Safari Park (formerly the Wild Animal Park). The park is about 45 minutes from where we were staying, in an amazing semi-mountainous area. We saw pretty much everything we wanted to see, including the Safari Tour. We were a bit disappointed that the balloon experience (a tethered hot air balloon "ride") was not functioning due to the wind that had picked up during the afternoon. Other than that, it was very satisfactory. It was nearly 100 degrees so we went slowly.
My younger kid wanted "face painting," but on her arm. I convinced her to get a henna tattoo instead, which will last a lot longer and wasn't significantly more expensive. She got a barn owl in her right forearm. The artist, a guy named Alex Boston, did a pretty good job.
We were very tired when we got home and pretty much had leftovers, took showers and fell into bed.
Tuesday we went to Seacoast Village, a little collection of shops and restaurants on the harbor (hence the name) that we heard (from our Old Town tour guide, Philip-with-just-one-L-still-Phil) had been designed and built by Disney in 1980. I had been there before (probably 35+ years ago now) and remembered liking it. We did some shopping, got some soft pretzels and some ice cream, walked around the harbor, and came home. Then we packed and watched a movie (see last blog).
Wednesday was kind of a lazy morning, because we weren't due to check into our next Airbnb until 1 PM, and had promised not to arrive before then (the host said they wanted to do a "thorough cleaning" - can't argue with that), and we didn't have to check out of our current digs until noon. We left around 11:30, and it was a 2+-hour drive to the next place. With the LA area traffic and construction, we didn't roll in until 1:30ish.
Our current lodgings are amazing. The last place was nice, but this is a cottage, one of 6 that share a small pool. It has two bedrooms, a living room, dining nook, kitchen and bathroom. It is very spacious and has AC in all the rooms. The decor is wonderful, very beach-themed (though I think we are pretty far from the beach). We had a problem with tiny ants in the kitchen on our first night (Wednesday night) but we let the hosts know and they took care of the problem while we were gone Thursday. The master bed is like a big marshmallow - one sinks into it and has trouble getting out, it's so soft. I'm sleeping well on it, so that's a good thing, but it feel so odd. The girls have a bedroom with two twin beds; they are excited to have their own space.
For dinner we ordered pizza (take-out) from a local place based on recommendation of the host. He's right; it was very good, and I don't really like pizza much. We went to bed fairly early because we had to get up early for our Disney adventures.
I think I'll do the two Disney days in a separate post (or possibly two).
peace,
wb
Today is Saturday, and it's been a busy week. Monday we were still in the San Diego area and we went to the Safari Park (formerly the Wild Animal Park). The park is about 45 minutes from where we were staying, in an amazing semi-mountainous area. We saw pretty much everything we wanted to see, including the Safari Tour. We were a bit disappointed that the balloon experience (a tethered hot air balloon "ride") was not functioning due to the wind that had picked up during the afternoon. Other than that, it was very satisfactory. It was nearly 100 degrees so we went slowly.
My younger kid wanted "face painting," but on her arm. I convinced her to get a henna tattoo instead, which will last a lot longer and wasn't significantly more expensive. She got a barn owl in her right forearm. The artist, a guy named Alex Boston, did a pretty good job.
We were very tired when we got home and pretty much had leftovers, took showers and fell into bed.
Tuesday we went to Seacoast Village, a little collection of shops and restaurants on the harbor (hence the name) that we heard (from our Old Town tour guide, Philip-with-just-one-L-still-Phil) had been designed and built by Disney in 1980. I had been there before (probably 35+ years ago now) and remembered liking it. We did some shopping, got some soft pretzels and some ice cream, walked around the harbor, and came home. Then we packed and watched a movie (see last blog).
Wednesday was kind of a lazy morning, because we weren't due to check into our next Airbnb until 1 PM, and had promised not to arrive before then (the host said they wanted to do a "thorough cleaning" - can't argue with that), and we didn't have to check out of our current digs until noon. We left around 11:30, and it was a 2+-hour drive to the next place. With the LA area traffic and construction, we didn't roll in until 1:30ish.
Our current lodgings are amazing. The last place was nice, but this is a cottage, one of 6 that share a small pool. It has two bedrooms, a living room, dining nook, kitchen and bathroom. It is very spacious and has AC in all the rooms. The decor is wonderful, very beach-themed (though I think we are pretty far from the beach). We had a problem with tiny ants in the kitchen on our first night (Wednesday night) but we let the hosts know and they took care of the problem while we were gone Thursday. The master bed is like a big marshmallow - one sinks into it and has trouble getting out, it's so soft. I'm sleeping well on it, so that's a good thing, but it feel so odd. The girls have a bedroom with two twin beds; they are excited to have their own space.
For dinner we ordered pizza (take-out) from a local place based on recommendation of the host. He's right; it was very good, and I don't really like pizza much. We went to bed fairly early because we had to get up early for our Disney adventures.
I think I'll do the two Disney days in a separate post (or possibly two).
peace,
wb
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Hello, friends,
Feeling refreshed after having a dinner of leftovers, a nice shower and watching The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension with the girls. They tolerated it pretty well - it *is* an 80's movie and very quirky. I remember watching it more than once in college and liking it, and thinking tonight that... it's weird. But it's part of my youth and I thought they should see it once, anyway. There are definitely some good lines in it, and I love it that it doesn't take itself too seriously.
This one will be shorter than the one for Saturday, because we didn't do much yesterday, which was nice. Over breakfast we watched our church's Livestream service, which is 10:30 at home, and we were up by 7:30 so it worked out perfectly. After church/breakfast we drove out to La Jolla to go to the beach. We parked in this little cave of a parking garage, and there was no attendant on duty. It took us a while to find a sign that said we could pay on the way out if no attendant there.
We walked down to the beach, through not too much traffic and lots of construction, and were surprised to find the rocks covered with sea birds, including pelicans. A little farther south we saw our first sea lions, and stopped to watch them sunning on the rocks. Continuing on the path by the water, we came to an area where we could go out to get closer to the animals. We didn't get too close - probably no closer than 20 feet - but the sea lions didn't seem to notice. Farther along there was a [collective noun] of sea lions lying on the beach, fairly immobile in the sun, surrounded (a bit too closely for my comfort) by tourists.
I looked up the collective noun for sea lions and came up with several: bob, colony, crash, flock, harem (females), herd, hurdle, pod, raft, rookery, and team. These on the beach probably were closest to a "crash," because they were crashed out. We did get down on the beach, but we chose one that was sea lion free, so as not to have to deal with proximity of wild animals, no matter how cute. My elder kid and I waded a bit; the younger one didn't want to get her feet wet, but I said this might be the only time she'd be able to say she touched the Pacific on this trip, so she did.
We walked down to the Children's Pool, and there was a harbor seal on the beach. The PA at the lifeguard station blared that the seal was ill and recovering, and for people to stay 50 feet away. It would have been nice to have someone policing the other beaches a little better. At one point we saw a white woman go off and scream at a bunch of Asian people (whether native San Diegans or tourists, I don't know, but I suspect tourists, because locals wouldn't have gotten so close to the sea lions, I would think). She called them idiots and railed at them to "leave the sea lions alone" until most of them left the beach. While I applaud her sentiment (to protect the wildlife), I cannot condone her methods. I wonder if any of the tourists will remember the US as the place where the crazy white woman screamed them off the beach.
That brings up something else I've noticed on this vacation: while my fellow tourists may not be always very pleasant to be around, I've found the hired people to be extremely pleasant, from the store clerk at Michael's (we had to stop for origami paper) to the information people, to the period-dressed folks in Old Town, and the Zoo and Safari Park employees - everyone has been very kind, more than I've found in other places (save when we were in the UK last year and only had one person be grouchy with us). It has been a nice experience so far from that perspective.
After a couple of hours, we decided to go back home. We did sit for a good 20 minutes on the way back to the car and watch the sea lions frolicking in the waves, including leaping and body surfing. It was so cute to watch them all glide together through a wave, even though only one or two would end up on the beach. Some of them were lying on the beach and letting the waves roll them over as well. It was such fun to watch.
We found an attendant when we returned to our car and paid him, then sat in beach traffic for 20 minutes just trying to get out of town. I'm taking advantage of the time change while I can to get us all up and out early so we can find parking, etc. So far it has worked heavily in our favor, with good parking spots and crowds only increasing as we're ready to leave. We went back to the house for a little while, then went to Costco to get gasoline (what a line, egad) and a few other things, then stopped at Michael's (as stated above) to get origami paper because we forgot ours. We had dinner and did laundry - the washer and dryer are on the back porch, interesting - and then watched dumb Youtube videos for an hour or so before bed (James Veitch, Monty Python's Dead Parrot and Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, etc) because it's important to ground my kids in the classics. :)
time for bed,
good night
wb
Feeling refreshed after having a dinner of leftovers, a nice shower and watching The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension with the girls. They tolerated it pretty well - it *is* an 80's movie and very quirky. I remember watching it more than once in college and liking it, and thinking tonight that... it's weird. But it's part of my youth and I thought they should see it once, anyway. There are definitely some good lines in it, and I love it that it doesn't take itself too seriously.
This one will be shorter than the one for Saturday, because we didn't do much yesterday, which was nice. Over breakfast we watched our church's Livestream service, which is 10:30 at home, and we were up by 7:30 so it worked out perfectly. After church/breakfast we drove out to La Jolla to go to the beach. We parked in this little cave of a parking garage, and there was no attendant on duty. It took us a while to find a sign that said we could pay on the way out if no attendant there.
We walked down to the beach, through not too much traffic and lots of construction, and were surprised to find the rocks covered with sea birds, including pelicans. A little farther south we saw our first sea lions, and stopped to watch them sunning on the rocks. Continuing on the path by the water, we came to an area where we could go out to get closer to the animals. We didn't get too close - probably no closer than 20 feet - but the sea lions didn't seem to notice. Farther along there was a [collective noun] of sea lions lying on the beach, fairly immobile in the sun, surrounded (a bit too closely for my comfort) by tourists.
I looked up the collective noun for sea lions and came up with several: bob, colony, crash, flock, harem (females), herd, hurdle, pod, raft, rookery, and team. These on the beach probably were closest to a "crash," because they were crashed out. We did get down on the beach, but we chose one that was sea lion free, so as not to have to deal with proximity of wild animals, no matter how cute. My elder kid and I waded a bit; the younger one didn't want to get her feet wet, but I said this might be the only time she'd be able to say she touched the Pacific on this trip, so she did.
We walked down to the Children's Pool, and there was a harbor seal on the beach. The PA at the lifeguard station blared that the seal was ill and recovering, and for people to stay 50 feet away. It would have been nice to have someone policing the other beaches a little better. At one point we saw a white woman go off and scream at a bunch of Asian people (whether native San Diegans or tourists, I don't know, but I suspect tourists, because locals wouldn't have gotten so close to the sea lions, I would think). She called them idiots and railed at them to "leave the sea lions alone" until most of them left the beach. While I applaud her sentiment (to protect the wildlife), I cannot condone her methods. I wonder if any of the tourists will remember the US as the place where the crazy white woman screamed them off the beach.
That brings up something else I've noticed on this vacation: while my fellow tourists may not be always very pleasant to be around, I've found the hired people to be extremely pleasant, from the store clerk at Michael's (we had to stop for origami paper) to the information people, to the period-dressed folks in Old Town, and the Zoo and Safari Park employees - everyone has been very kind, more than I've found in other places (save when we were in the UK last year and only had one person be grouchy with us). It has been a nice experience so far from that perspective.
After a couple of hours, we decided to go back home. We did sit for a good 20 minutes on the way back to the car and watch the sea lions frolicking in the waves, including leaping and body surfing. It was so cute to watch them all glide together through a wave, even though only one or two would end up on the beach. Some of them were lying on the beach and letting the waves roll them over as well. It was such fun to watch.
We found an attendant when we returned to our car and paid him, then sat in beach traffic for 20 minutes just trying to get out of town. I'm taking advantage of the time change while I can to get us all up and out early so we can find parking, etc. So far it has worked heavily in our favor, with good parking spots and crowds only increasing as we're ready to leave. We went back to the house for a little while, then went to Costco to get gasoline (what a line, egad) and a few other things, then stopped at Michael's (as stated above) to get origami paper because we forgot ours. We had dinner and did laundry - the washer and dryer are on the back porch, interesting - and then watched dumb Youtube videos for an hour or so before bed (James Veitch, Monty Python's Dead Parrot and Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, etc) because it's important to ground my kids in the classics. :)
time for bed,
good night
wb
Monday, July 30, 2018
This always happens to me. I have the best intentions of keeping up with my "journal" in this space, and then I'm so busy vacationing (vacating?) that I miss a day, which becomes two, and....
Well, this is my attempt to get caught up. We had a busy day today (more on that later) but are now back at "home" in El Cajon relaxing and recovering from the 100-degree heat.
(In case you're wondering why so much improved punctuation, I'm typing this on my computer rather than my Bluetooth keyboard, so the shift key works much better.)
Anyway... Where did I leave off? I think I covered Thursday and Friday (I did tell you about the Zoo, right?). So now for Saturday. We are in the are for almost a full week, so we decided to do the big park days (Zoo and Safari Park) on weekdays, and save the weekend for lesser excursions. Summer is the high season, but I figured weekends would be even busier, so Saturday we decided to go to Old Town. Old Town is the area where San Diego began. It became a ghost town after the "new town" (now downtown San Diego) was established, and then it became a historical site. I posted some photos yesterday on my Facebook page; since they are on my phone I don't have good access to put them here, so you'll just have to take my word for it. So to speak.
Anyway, we were still waking up early, so we got into Old Town around 9 AM and got a prime parking space in a free lot - huzzah. We went to the information booth to find out what there was to do. The parking lot was off the beaten path a bit, and most of the places didn't open until 10, so the girls were a bit confused as to what we would be doing. I only had a vague idea, so after talking with the information booth guy, I bought us tickets on the Old Town Trolley Tour. Genevieve wanted to go to one of the museums in Balboa Park, but since I'm the only driver, I didn't want to drive over there and find more parking, so I figured the Trolley would be a nice way to get there, in a hop-on, hop-off sort of way. The girls (especially the younger one) were a bit grouchy (she's not a morning person) so we were all a bit out of sorts by the time the next trolley arrived. I sat behind the girls at one of the openings (no glass, better photos) and we waited for... whatever came next. The information person said it was a money-back guarantee, so I figured, what the heck.
It turned out that the older male driver, whose name was "Philip, with just... one 'L' - still Phil" (which he said at every available opportunity, until we were all saying it along with him by an hour into the tour) was a retired missionary to Japan, and retired teacher, and he was charming and just corny enough, but really knowledgeable (as one would expect). We were about 15 minutes into the tour when my younger daughter leaned back and said, "Can we ride this all day?" I was very happy that it turned out so well.
The Balboa Park stop was third from the last stop (which was Old Town), so we ended up on the trolley for a good 90 minutes, listening to interesting facts about the airport (single busiest one-runway airport in the US, with flights taking off every 90 seconds), the military bases, the Coronado Bridge, architecture and history of downtown, average rainfall in August (0.07"), etc. It was really neat, and the kids didn't want to get off, especially as there was a pretty good chance that we would get a different tour bus driver for the last two stops, but we disembarked anyway.
There was an artisan show along the road we took to the Visitor's Center, with painters, jewelers with wire pieces, and a man selling ceramics. I am a sucker for a nice ceramic mug or bowl, so we picked them up and held them and admired them, and moved along. We passed the Sprekels Organ Pavilion, a huge open-air space with a pipe organ on a large stage with semi-circular architecture flanking it. Someone was playing a piece I didn't recognize, but it was impressive. It was probably 1/4 mile from the Visitor's Center to the Museum of Man, which my elder daughter had researched a bit and wanted to visit. There was a special exhibit (which cost a bit extra) on "Cannibalism: myth and legend," which she wanted to see. I wasn't particularly chuffed about that, seeing that the "edible" chapter in Mary Roach's otherwise very entertaining book about cadavers made me rather ill, but we opted in because she was really interested.
The museum itself was pretty simple; less occupied than the Public Museum of Grand Rapids. It had very "interactive" exhibits, including one on monsters. There was a giant dream catcher at the end of that exhibit which invited people to write their "biggest fears" on a paper feather and attach it to the dream catcher. The first one that caught my eye simply said, "laundry." I can see where that might be a big fear for someone....
Among the other exhibits was one called Post Secret, in which people are invited to send a post card with a secret they'd never revealed, anonymously, to the collector. It's made into an art project, so the secrets are "illustrated" in a fashion. There was a collection of them in one portion of the museum. As you can imagine, many of them were quite depressing, but a few of them made me laugh. We didn't last long in that exhibit.
There was an exhibit on race, one on ancient Mayans, one on the indigenous peoples of the San Diego area, the Kumeyaay, and one on animals and their relationships with people, so quite a diverse offering in this museum. We were tired and it was close to 1 PM and I was HUNGRY (having been up since 4:30 AM again) so we left he museum to get lunch, managing to find some pretty good sandwiches for not too much (my kids do realize we're spending their inheritance, I think). It was a good call to eat before we went back in to the cannibal exhibit, I think....
The exhibit was some of what one would expect, with stories about explorers, early evidence of cannibalism, and musings about whether "cannibal" was just another epithet (such as "savage") without any evidence to support that certain peoples were actual cannibals. The thing that disturbed me the most was the idea that since these unknown early peoples were shunted into "non-human" or "less human" categories by the explorers/missionaries/whatever, then even if they WERE cannibals, is that so bad? As if the mislabeling of a category of humans justified whatever actual horrific practices they engaged in. They mentioned the fact that the Europeans were engaging in similar acts to the human sacrifice and flaying of live people that the Aztecs did at that time, so who are they to criticize, because after all, the Aztecs "ritually removing and eating hearts... did it out of intense religious obligation: they believed that human sacrifices were responsible for the sun rising each day." Hm. Just because someone believes something strongly, or because it's a sanctioned cultural practice, doesn't mean that it's morally acceptable. I'm sure you can think of some examples yourselves.
Anyway, the spin on this made me uncomfortable, as did the later exhibits talking about which shipwrecks ended up in killing a crew member to be eaten, and the part about the Donner Party, plus the "edible human" "medicinal: section, which I had to skip because of revulsion. The museum had an interactive exhibit with plastic bottles hanging on the wall into which people could put slips saying whether they would eat someone or starve to death - some of those entries were kind of funny, actually, but by then we'd had enough of that. One part that I did think fascinating was a short film on the survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force plane crash in the Andes in 1972. I wondered how the survivors could make themselves eat another person. The story was riveting, and very personal. I still think I'd rather not eat someone else, but I've never been hungry enough or in a position to make that decision. I hope I never am.
Whew, sorry about that. It was a rather intense experience. After that we decided not to try another museum, but to walk back to the Trolley stop and head for home. On our way we stopped again at the ceramics booth and ended up buying three little bowls from the artist, who was a very personable fellow. We will enjoy eating ice cream out of those bowls, I think. It was only a few yards to the Trolley stop from there. There was an employee standing nearby to answer questions; she was also quite friendly and we chatted until the trolley showed up. And Guess Who was the Driver? Philip-with-only-one-L-still-Phil! We were excited to finish the tour with him, which lasted another 45 minutes or so. We saw the hill up which Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun raced a motorcycle, and Little Italy, and a few more things.
Once we got back to Old Town, there were a lot more people there. There was a demonstration of historical arts, such as quilting, basket weaving, and spinning wool thread on hand drop-spinners (whatever they're called - see how much I learned?) I felt sorry for the people in period costumes because it was almost 90 degrees. They were in the shade and there was a nice breeze, but still....
We got some specialty sodas from a place called "Old Town Jerky and Root Beer," which had more kinds of root beer than I had ever seen. I like root beer, but wow. The girls don't like it, but they found some other sodas so we bought two 6-packs of choose-your-own so we could each have 4. One of the ones we bought was called "Leninade" and the bottle says "Get hammered & sickled" and "A taste worth waiting in line for" and "a party in every bottle." I was amused. And the soda was pretty good. We drove home about 1/2 hour and chilled out. I made burgers for dinner and we watched "National Treasure" on Netflix (there's an account for guests here), which my elder daughter had seen parts of in school, but we'd never seen the whole thing. Not bad.
This has been long enough. I will continue with yesterday's installment (which I anticipate being much shorter) another time.
love
wendy
Well, this is my attempt to get caught up. We had a busy day today (more on that later) but are now back at "home" in El Cajon relaxing and recovering from the 100-degree heat.
(In case you're wondering why so much improved punctuation, I'm typing this on my computer rather than my Bluetooth keyboard, so the shift key works much better.)
Anyway... Where did I leave off? I think I covered Thursday and Friday (I did tell you about the Zoo, right?). So now for Saturday. We are in the are for almost a full week, so we decided to do the big park days (Zoo and Safari Park) on weekdays, and save the weekend for lesser excursions. Summer is the high season, but I figured weekends would be even busier, so Saturday we decided to go to Old Town. Old Town is the area where San Diego began. It became a ghost town after the "new town" (now downtown San Diego) was established, and then it became a historical site. I posted some photos yesterday on my Facebook page; since they are on my phone I don't have good access to put them here, so you'll just have to take my word for it. So to speak.
Anyway, we were still waking up early, so we got into Old Town around 9 AM and got a prime parking space in a free lot - huzzah. We went to the information booth to find out what there was to do. The parking lot was off the beaten path a bit, and most of the places didn't open until 10, so the girls were a bit confused as to what we would be doing. I only had a vague idea, so after talking with the information booth guy, I bought us tickets on the Old Town Trolley Tour. Genevieve wanted to go to one of the museums in Balboa Park, but since I'm the only driver, I didn't want to drive over there and find more parking, so I figured the Trolley would be a nice way to get there, in a hop-on, hop-off sort of way. The girls (especially the younger one) were a bit grouchy (she's not a morning person) so we were all a bit out of sorts by the time the next trolley arrived. I sat behind the girls at one of the openings (no glass, better photos) and we waited for... whatever came next. The information person said it was a money-back guarantee, so I figured, what the heck.
It turned out that the older male driver, whose name was "Philip, with just... one 'L' - still Phil" (which he said at every available opportunity, until we were all saying it along with him by an hour into the tour) was a retired missionary to Japan, and retired teacher, and he was charming and just corny enough, but really knowledgeable (as one would expect). We were about 15 minutes into the tour when my younger daughter leaned back and said, "Can we ride this all day?" I was very happy that it turned out so well.
The Balboa Park stop was third from the last stop (which was Old Town), so we ended up on the trolley for a good 90 minutes, listening to interesting facts about the airport (single busiest one-runway airport in the US, with flights taking off every 90 seconds), the military bases, the Coronado Bridge, architecture and history of downtown, average rainfall in August (0.07"), etc. It was really neat, and the kids didn't want to get off, especially as there was a pretty good chance that we would get a different tour bus driver for the last two stops, but we disembarked anyway.
There was an artisan show along the road we took to the Visitor's Center, with painters, jewelers with wire pieces, and a man selling ceramics. I am a sucker for a nice ceramic mug or bowl, so we picked them up and held them and admired them, and moved along. We passed the Sprekels Organ Pavilion, a huge open-air space with a pipe organ on a large stage with semi-circular architecture flanking it. Someone was playing a piece I didn't recognize, but it was impressive. It was probably 1/4 mile from the Visitor's Center to the Museum of Man, which my elder daughter had researched a bit and wanted to visit. There was a special exhibit (which cost a bit extra) on "Cannibalism: myth and legend," which she wanted to see. I wasn't particularly chuffed about that, seeing that the "edible" chapter in Mary Roach's otherwise very entertaining book about cadavers made me rather ill, but we opted in because she was really interested.
The museum itself was pretty simple; less occupied than the Public Museum of Grand Rapids. It had very "interactive" exhibits, including one on monsters. There was a giant dream catcher at the end of that exhibit which invited people to write their "biggest fears" on a paper feather and attach it to the dream catcher. The first one that caught my eye simply said, "laundry." I can see where that might be a big fear for someone....
Among the other exhibits was one called Post Secret, in which people are invited to send a post card with a secret they'd never revealed, anonymously, to the collector. It's made into an art project, so the secrets are "illustrated" in a fashion. There was a collection of them in one portion of the museum. As you can imagine, many of them were quite depressing, but a few of them made me laugh. We didn't last long in that exhibit.
There was an exhibit on race, one on ancient Mayans, one on the indigenous peoples of the San Diego area, the Kumeyaay, and one on animals and their relationships with people, so quite a diverse offering in this museum. We were tired and it was close to 1 PM and I was HUNGRY (having been up since 4:30 AM again) so we left he museum to get lunch, managing to find some pretty good sandwiches for not too much (my kids do realize we're spending their inheritance, I think). It was a good call to eat before we went back in to the cannibal exhibit, I think....
The exhibit was some of what one would expect, with stories about explorers, early evidence of cannibalism, and musings about whether "cannibal" was just another epithet (such as "savage") without any evidence to support that certain peoples were actual cannibals. The thing that disturbed me the most was the idea that since these unknown early peoples were shunted into "non-human" or "less human" categories by the explorers/missionaries/whatever, then even if they WERE cannibals, is that so bad? As if the mislabeling of a category of humans justified whatever actual horrific practices they engaged in. They mentioned the fact that the Europeans were engaging in similar acts to the human sacrifice and flaying of live people that the Aztecs did at that time, so who are they to criticize, because after all, the Aztecs "ritually removing and eating hearts... did it out of intense religious obligation: they believed that human sacrifices were responsible for the sun rising each day." Hm. Just because someone believes something strongly, or because it's a sanctioned cultural practice, doesn't mean that it's morally acceptable. I'm sure you can think of some examples yourselves.
Anyway, the spin on this made me uncomfortable, as did the later exhibits talking about which shipwrecks ended up in killing a crew member to be eaten, and the part about the Donner Party, plus the "edible human" "medicinal: section, which I had to skip because of revulsion. The museum had an interactive exhibit with plastic bottles hanging on the wall into which people could put slips saying whether they would eat someone or starve to death - some of those entries were kind of funny, actually, but by then we'd had enough of that. One part that I did think fascinating was a short film on the survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force plane crash in the Andes in 1972. I wondered how the survivors could make themselves eat another person. The story was riveting, and very personal. I still think I'd rather not eat someone else, but I've never been hungry enough or in a position to make that decision. I hope I never am.
Whew, sorry about that. It was a rather intense experience. After that we decided not to try another museum, but to walk back to the Trolley stop and head for home. On our way we stopped again at the ceramics booth and ended up buying three little bowls from the artist, who was a very personable fellow. We will enjoy eating ice cream out of those bowls, I think. It was only a few yards to the Trolley stop from there. There was an employee standing nearby to answer questions; she was also quite friendly and we chatted until the trolley showed up. And Guess Who was the Driver? Philip-with-only-one-L-still-Phil! We were excited to finish the tour with him, which lasted another 45 minutes or so. We saw the hill up which Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun raced a motorcycle, and Little Italy, and a few more things.
Once we got back to Old Town, there were a lot more people there. There was a demonstration of historical arts, such as quilting, basket weaving, and spinning wool thread on hand drop-spinners (whatever they're called - see how much I learned?) I felt sorry for the people in period costumes because it was almost 90 degrees. They were in the shade and there was a nice breeze, but still....
We got some specialty sodas from a place called "Old Town Jerky and Root Beer," which had more kinds of root beer than I had ever seen. I like root beer, but wow. The girls don't like it, but they found some other sodas so we bought two 6-packs of choose-your-own so we could each have 4. One of the ones we bought was called "Leninade" and the bottle says "Get hammered & sickled" and "A taste worth waiting in line for" and "a party in every bottle." I was amused. And the soda was pretty good. We drove home about 1/2 hour and chilled out. I made burgers for dinner and we watched "National Treasure" on Netflix (there's an account for guests here), which my elder daughter had seen parts of in school, but we'd never seen the whole thing. Not bad.
This has been long enough. I will continue with yesterday's installment (which I anticipate being much shorter) another time.
love
wendy
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Hello, friends,
Greetings from sunny San Diego, California. The 'shift' key on my bluetooth keyboard isn't working very well, so forgive me if i'm not great with capitals - they take a lot of effort.
today is day 3 of our vacation, and so far it has been a good time. The girls and i actually left Michigan on wednesday because our flight was out of chicago and our friends Rose and Chris offered to let us stay at their house (in addition to leaving our car there for the duration). We had an uneventful drive to chicagoland, had a nice dinner and relaxed evening watching a movie, and then took a cab to the airport thursday morning without a hitch.
the time in the airport was about what one would expect; we didn't eat lunch there because we were full from breakfast, and we brought snacks for the plane, so we were pretty well set. the flight itself left about 30 minutes late because we were 1) waiting for some late arrivals, and 2) waiting for a clear runway. the pilot was funny and friendly-sounding and said he would fly at 32,00 feet so we could go faster. and we did, because despite the delays, we landed at our original arrival time at LAX. we caught an immediate shuttle to the car rental place, used the "express" servie to rent because i had reserved a car, and picked out a cute red nissan Rogue (?) hatchback, and drove away. into an hour of LA rush-hour traffic.
Thankfully, i had Genevieve navigating with my GPS, and we were tired and punchy enough to laugh our way through the traffic for the next 75 minutes or so. we are staying near San diego (el cajon) so we had to drive 130 miles after we got off the plane. The girls didn't want to bother trying to find a place for dinner, and by the time we rolled in at 8 local time (11 on our inner clocks) we were too tired to eat, so we went to bed.
day 2: i woke up around 4:30 and couldn't go back to sleep - an expected result of going to bed at 9, i suppose - and the girls got up closer to 6:30 or 7. We found a local place to eat breakfast (we hadn't wanted to stop for groceries the night before, either) which was not crowded and very good. i still have leftovers in the fridge from that. we went back to the Airbnb place we are renting, which is a tiny place above a detached garage with one bedroom and a fold-out couch in the living room. There is plenty of space for the 3 of us, though.
after that we got ready and navigated our way to the San Diego Zoo, and got there just as it opened at 9. i think it got to almost 100 degrees; even if it didn't, we were pretty hot and worn out after 6 hours of walking around the very hilly, very scenic (in two senses - beautifully laid out, and no straight way to get anywhere) and well-tended park. we declined to spend $12 each on a sandwich. we had brought out cooling towels and sun-blocking sleeves; i've never tried wetting the sleeves down before, but we did yesterday, and it was AMAZING. highly recommended for keeping cool and preventing sunburn.
There were so many cool animals. Sometimes we walked through exhibits and read all the info; sometimes we wandered by, appreciating the overall impression, and sometimes we say around and watched the monkeys playing or whatever. of course the pandas had us gawking and cooing. There weren't any babies there but the adults are so cute that one can hardly help it. The elephants were another favorite. The gift shops are always so neat - in between the kitsch, there are some really nice things, so i picked up some presents for people at home (already!).
after 6 hours we were tired so we came home. the girls hardly complained at all, even though we were all a bit grouchy from the heat and hungry for dinner. we landed at home for about an hour (and spent some of that time watching youtube videos of baby pandas) and then i headed out to get groceries. i had to go to two places to get everything i needed, and when I got home and fixed dinner it was about 7. That dinner tasted better than anything i've eaten in a while.
I feel very blessed to have the kids i have - they are good-natured and mature, as well as funny and charming. this while vacation would have a different feel if they were complaining or bickering, but they continue to get along as well as ever.
i think i will leave this hear and talk about today in another post. Thanks for your kind thoughts and prayers for us. We are having a lot of fun.
love,
wb
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