San Diego: Day 2

We ate breakfast at the hotel this morning, coffee was on order. We picked up our car from valet and we were off to the San Diego Zoo in hopes of more shade than the day before! We got it thank God!

He's a modest fella!

The zoo wasn’t anything special. Actually we found that a lot of the animals were “off exhibit” for the day. Baby tiger cubs, OFF, polar bears, OFF!! GRRRR!!!

We saw alot of this!!

We had high expectations since we’ve heard it’s the best zoo in the country. We didn’t exactly agree. I think we prefer the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. We did manage our way over to the Hospitality Center for some free beers. Those ice cold beers tasted great after sweating to death all day! We downed several and decided our zoo time had come to an end.

On our way out Jeff and I had a brief discussion about what animal we’d like to come back as in our next life. We almost immediately agreed on the otters. What a way to spend the day, carefree and swimming and playing all day long. Then I changed my mind, but Jeff stayed an otter. I’d like to come back as a Koala Bear. Eat and sleep all day long and they are cuddly and cute. That sounds like a winner to me!

We headed to Coronado Island to go check out Hotel del Coronado, or as the locals call it, the “Del”. We wandered around the property and took pictures and walked out onto the HUGE beach.

We went into the "Crown Room" which is where Presidents have hosted some flashy events. It's a beautiful facility with wood floors walls and ceilings. I liked the chandeliers.

The crown chandeliers designed by Wizard of Oz author, L. Frank Baum!

We decided to eat on their mighty large deck overlooking the ocean, my chicken salad was good. Then I ate most of Jeff’s fries! We decided to drive around Coronado for a little bit and then headed back to the hotel.

Before we could get to the hotel we drove by the piers on the oceanfront. There was a festival of some sorts going on. And do I like corn dogs and cotton candy, we had to come back. Turns out they were having the “Festival of Sail”. All the tall ships were in the port and people were taking tours of them. It was really beautiful. There was one ship from another country that was in port and they were preparing to leave, so all the men climbed the rigging and went across the masts as the tugboats were pulling them away from the dock. They were all singing in unison. It was really cool.

Do you see them all standing on the masts??

That pretty much signified the end of the festival and people were being shood out. Instead of walking back to the hotel we decided to take a Rickshaw, or as some people call it, a Peddlecar. That was kinda neat.

On the way back to the hotel we decided to meet up with Patrick, an old friend who happens to live in town. His mom was there too. How ironic, because she lives in Richmond. We met up at a bar called Bub’s, which is a HOKIES bar!! And probably the farthest Hokie’s bar from Blacksburg. It was like being back in Virginia. Hokie flags and so on.

Patrick recommended we get a burrito at Roberto’s before we leave town. Since we had kinda just eaten at “the Del” we decided to split the “California Burrito”, complete with French fries inside. It was delish!!

We watched the closing ceremonies at we ate our burrito and then hit the hay for our long day of plane travel back to St. Louis.