San Diego

So I finally got my pictures downloaded last night and figured I better start blogging about our trip before I forget everything! My memory is bad like that. Word of warning, there will be a lot of pictures to follow.
We arrived in San Diego last Thursday a little later than anticipated. Surprisingly our Best Western Hotel was pretty nice. Surpassed my expectations that's for sure. I had remembered Best Westerns being a little ghetto but quite the contrary. We also weren't sure the town of Poway would be up to par but it was nice too and the drive wasn't to far from the places we wanted to go, half hour at most I would say. We decided to make that our temple day. Can I just say that that temple is so gorgeous? It really is, inside and out. Here we have a lovely handicap parking lot picture. Probably should have re-thought that one but we were running late for our session as was the lady who took the picture.
After the temple we headed over to PF Changs and had a very nice dinner. Our attempts to take a picture there were less than successful however so sorry, no pics.
Friday was our Sea World day. I was a little concerned that Sea World might actually be a little lame for 2 adults. I mean, I remembered it to be fun from when I was like 8 but everything is cool when you are 8. We however, were not disappointed. We actually really enjoyed it a lot. During the summer Sea World is open until 11 pm and have some pretty cool night shows and stuff. We took full advantage of the day and got everything in that we wanted to.
The real excitment came at the penguin exhibit. Unlike most the people who rotated through on a moving sidewalk we stayed for the whole presentation. At the end they announced that whoever could answer the following question would be allowed to come back and interact with the penguins. Sweet! Before the question was even asked JR leaned over to me and said "I bet the answer is going to be fusiform." For those of you who may not know what that means, it's the shape that many sea animals take on to allow them to move smoothly in the water. Sure enough, the question came and JR was ready. "What is the name of the shape that penguins body takes on..." JR's hand was up before the question even finished. Don't ask me how he knew, it was just meant to be I guess, our destiny. They actually disqualifed him for raising it to early. Only one other lady raised her hand but she didn't actually know the answer so they gave it to JR anyways. Off we went to see the penguins up close and personal. They took us into where all 500 penguins were living which happened to be a nice 26 degrees. They then told us more about them and let us pet a penguin. I happen to think it's pretty awesome that I have pet a penguin. The pictures we took, not so cool. We couldn't use our flash so they all turned out dark and blurry.

At least we have our memories.

We really liked the shows they put on. We started with the Dolphin Show:


Then headed to Shamu. I have to say, this show was a bit cheesy but still cool. In case you couldn't tell, there is a guy on Shamu's head in this picture. There is nothing better than a man riding a whale.

The Sea Lion/walrus show was really cute. It had a cute little story behind it and a mime! Can't go wrong with men riding on whales or mimes.

From this point our Sea World day is probably getting pretty boring to you. The rest of the day consisted of more exhibits:



Lovely Dovey pictures in pretty places

A ride on the ski lift type thing across the bay


A water rapids ride that left us soaking. That was a fun 50 mintues wait just to end up on the bad seats that soak you the most:

One more thing you can't go wrong with, large magnets. Classic.

That concludes our day o' fun at Sea World. I can't believe I have been posting for like 45 minutes and have only gone through a day and a half.
Saturday we had every intention of going to Mission Beach. By the time we got there it was like 1:30 and after driving around looking for a parking spot for another hour and a half we gave it up. Seriously, it was ridiculous. You had to stalk people who you thought were leaving just to try to get your blinker on before the next guy for their parking spot. No thank you. We ended up instead at Coronado Island. What a pretty place. I love that sort of atmosphere. And we finally got some beach time!



I like to call this one "Fun with Seaweed" I personally won't touch the stuff but I guess the Indian Jones in JR just couldn't be contained.

After Coronado Island we headed in to down town San Diego and hit up Seaport Village. I just really love that place. I have never been there at night but it was really nice. They had some live music playing outside and all the cute shops were a lot of fun.
The next day being Sunday we knew we were going to need some food to get us through so we thought we would go to dinner somewhere where we knew we could get a lot of leftovers so we headed over to Bucca Di Beppo. Saying that name alone makes it all worth it. This was my first experience there. What a fun place. They even gave us a tour of the kitchen. Apparently you can request a table right in the middle of the kitchen as well. Weird. Our plan worked, we had tons of leftovers.
Sunday we found the local church building, enjoyed our meetings, and then headed to LaJolla for some more beach time. Although we couldn't swim, it was really nice just to sit and enjoy the ocean. California is so beautiful!


Monday we got up with a determination to make it to Mission Beach. I really wanted to rent roller blades cause I knew it has a really long boardwalk there and I haven't roller bladed since I was like 13. We got there around 10 and unlike the last attempt there were tons of parking spots. We found that the trick is to go on a weekday in the morning. By the time we left though cars were doing the dancing game for our parking spot this time. Suckers! Get up early and you won't have that problem!
All in all, our trip was great. I would definitely recommend San Diego for a nice little getaway.