San Diego, California

A couple of weeks before our time in California was up, Will and I spent a long weekend in San Diego. We headed off on the Saturday morning of Memorial weekend. We had pre-booked a hire car from our local John Wayne airport, but due to the long weekend we had to wait a bit at the airport for one to become available.

Eventually we were able to hit the road, but the long weekend traffic was pretty horrendous. In normal traffic the trip to San Diego should take less than an hour and a half. We travelled for about an hour and hadn't got too far so we decided to stop for a while at Dana Point, about 25 miles away. It was nice to walk on the beach for a bit and grab some lunch. Yes, that icecream above was Will's lunch!   

I had booked a very cool 1-bedroom Air BnB apartment for 3 nights, just north of the city centre. It was also just a few blocks west of Balboa Park, so the perfect location for exploring San Diego. 

On Sunday we had a big day of exploring. We started off by walking to the waterfront. There was a maritime festival on so lots of interesting boats out on the water, as well as stalls and food trucks. There was also an international sandcastle competition taking place on one of the piers which we paid to enter. I LOVE this type of thing and the sandcastles were spectacular. Each entry was given exactly the same amount of sand and they had points taken off if it wasn't all used. We turned up about half an hour before judging so there was some frantic last-minute work taking place by some of the teams. Here is a selection of the entries.

After the sandcastles it was time for the USS Midway museum. The Midway is an aircraft carrier which was commissioned a week after the end of World War II and was the largest ship in the world until 1955. It was decommissioned in 1992.

The statistics concerning the ship are fascinating. Over 4000 crewmen worked the ship to enable 200 aviators to fly. The crewmen quarters were pretty claustrophobic. They sure stacked them up and packed them in! This was in marked contrast to the commanding officer's quarters which were relatively palatial in comparison.

I enjoyed this museum much more than I thought I would, it was incredibly interesting. Maybe it helps that 'Top Gun' is one of my all-time favourite movies! It did feel like you were on the movie set at times, especially when we explored the operation rooms. Seeing all the pilot's call signs was cool.

When in operation the Midway could hold 80 aircraft. In the museum they have 29 restored aircraft, some of which you can go inside. Some are in the giant hanger...

And the rest are up on the 4 acre flight deck.

There were several retired servicemen around the place talking about their experiences of working on the Midway. The guy below was talking us through the take-off and landing procedures of the fighter planes which was interesting.

We had a very enjoyable and informative few hours on the Midway, I can see why it is the number one thing to do in San Diego according to TripAdvisor. My only gripe would be the 5pm closing time of the museum, as we could easily have spent even longer on the ship. I think that they hold private functions in the evenings as just before closing time it looked like they were preparing the flight deck for a social function.

After the Midway we spent a bit of time exploring the city centre. There is an artist who has several big pieces around the city which are supposed to be interacted with.

We spent most of Monday exploring Balboa Park. This place is awesome! At 1200 acres it is huge, and numerous museums and galleries are located in it. We weren't in the mood for going through the museums and Will was keen for a couple of the art galleries, but unfortunately they were closed due to the public holiday. We did admire some of the cool architecture of these buildings from the outside.

Will loves cacti, so was in his element when we came across the desert cactus garden in the park.

There was also a very nice rose garden, which was full of literally hundreds of people playing Pokemon Go. Apparently it is THE place to Pokemon in San Diego... We joined them for a bit. It was pretty exciting when I caught my first ever Dragonite (one of the rarest and most powerful Pokemon there is!).

While at the rose garden we met this very cool hipster dude who was out playing Pokemon with his pet parrot Sparky...

Tuesday was a work day for Will as he was giving a presentation at the University of California, San Diego. His talk went well and it was a good chance for further networking. We are seriously considering returning to California at some stage in the future, and San Diego would probably be our pick of places. It is a very cool city with beautiful beaches and great food, particularly Mexican. UCSD is also a very good university. Being right on the Mexican border the city is practically bilingual, so it would probably help if I learnt a bit of Spanish if we do end up there at some stage in the future... I accompanied Will to UCSD and spent the morning exploring the campus. The library is an interesting building.

I then walked from the university to La Jolla beach which is absolutely beautiful.

While swimming at the beach I had a dolphin swim past me about 2 metres away which was an amazing experience.

After swimming and lying on the beach to my heart's content, I went for a nice rocky coastal walk around the headland that you can see in the pic above. This took me to Scripps Park which had rugged rocky beaches teeming with sea lions and birdlife. It was also another legendary Pokemon spot with so much action it was hard to keep up!

I spent a very happy couple of hours here catching Pokemon, admiring the view, watching the wildlife, and eventually enjoying a very nice sunset. Will picked me up at around 7pm and we drove back to Irvine for our final week and a half in California.