Lost in San Diego

We drove down to San Diego without any problems, and found our hotel with the directions they gave us. It's in Hotel Circle, which is a little patch of land between the freeway and the river. No-one would want to live here, it's rather noisy but there are hotels all over the place. We are staying at the Comfort Inn and it is the noisiest hotel I have ever tried to sleep in. The first room they gave us had freeway views and was rather noisy so we asked if we could change. Sure they said, and moved us down a floor to a room with pool views. Great, we thought. Until we started poking around a bit. The coffee machine fell apart when I tried to fill it with water and when I pulled the carafe out the lid flew across the room. The fridge fixtures had all been torn out so that you couldn't store bottles or cartons of liquids in the door. The in-room safe was just ... missing. Light fittings were damaged. There were gruesome stains in the toilet and around the plug in the basin. But the best was yet to come. At around 9pm the noise started. Well, it had probably been there all along but we noticed it then ... large people running up and down the corridor shouting. Thumping sounds from upstairs and next door. Crashing of doors. Clonking from the hard-working ice machine. And "Ryan? RYAN!! Open the freaking (at least that I think he said freaking) door!!" (Bang bang bang) at 2.30am. And an airconditioner so noisy that Em thought that giant robots were coming to get her all night. We can laugh now, but at the time we were feeling a bit strung out! So we are moving on today, to a more spacious place a bit further out of town, which they promise us is quiet. However, even after all that, Em is upset that we are moving because the Comfort Inn has 'kids rooms' with BUNKS. (Which is why we are booked it in the first place). She commandeered the top bunk and rarely leaves it when we are in the room. To compensate, we have had to promise to seriously consider getting bunks for her room when we get back to NZ.

Despite all this we had a lovely day yesterday - we found a HUGE shopping mall in downtown and had a couple of pleasant hours poking around (I'm sure I spent more time waiting around outside Electronics Boutique than the others spent waiting while I combed the sale racks at Macy's though - and at least at Macy's there was a lovely comfy seating area with TV for bored husbands). Eventually we found a bookstore where we were all happy.

In the evening we ventured down to the waterfront - we did get a wee bit lost on the way, but found our way there without too much trouble. The waterfront is lovely - wide pathways, grassed areas, parking, interesting sculptures, despite the airport, seaport, fishing port and navy all working nearby. We headed for Seaport, a cute, cute, cute little shopping/eating village on the waterfront. However, we nearly drove into the sea when Al saw the Midway, an enormous aircraft carrier tied up right by the footpath. Hyperventilating with excitement, he shot into a parking space and we spent half an hour or so looking at it from the outside. Turns out it is a museum, and I'm guessing we are going to be going back there for a closer look today!



After dinner we had a look around the cutesy shops (including a fab bookstore called Upstart Crow) so that when we left it was quite dark. We were on the waterfront. We wanted to get to the I5 freeway. How hard could that be? Quite hard, as it happens. After a lot of driving around, map stops, emergency lane changes etc we ended up at SeaWorld. Don't even ask. We'd been driving for about half an hour at this point, at least it seemed like it. Every now and then we'd catch a glimpse of the freeway, we just couldn't find an on-ramp! To add to the confusion, Al was having trouble distinguishing left from right and I hadn't brought my glasses so I couldn't read the map in the dark. Every now and then a small and slightly panicky voice from the back seat would pipe up ... "stop swearing Dad" ... "are we lost?" .... "where are we?" ...

Luckily the I5 freeway is signposted at the SeaWorld carpark exit and we did finally find our way onto it and we did eventually make it back to the hotel!

Oh! I almost forgot to mention the highlight of last nights dinner! Battered and deep fried pickle slices and jalapeno slices! They were surprisingly good!