San Diego Roundup

A lovely place but quite spaced out but has good public transport to get around! After the expense of Vegas we had to spend nothing! We stayed in Pacific Hotel a budget hotel with no air con, an uncomfortable bed, no kitchen and shared bathroom. The hotel was dire but the area was perfect. The gas lamp area was clean, vibrant and busy with lots of restaurants, bars and happy hours!

On realising we had no kitchen and tired from another long journey we had dinner in an Indian restaurant across the road from the hotel! A home comfort we shared a plate of pacoras, a chicken chilli garlic curry (as they didn't have a chicken Saag), basmati rice and the best bit a spinach naan (dreams)! All was good and being America the portions were huge; a basket of pacoras and endless rice (we didn't finish the first plate) the only personal change would be less salt in the curry.

We saw a band in North Beach on our second night! The Wild Wild Wets and The Ohh Sees in The Pink Bar! It was an excellent night and my favourite gig we'd seen in California. It was a sold out gig but we made friends with the visual guy for The Wild Wild Wets so managed to stay for all three bands! His projections were excellent and worked perfectly with the bands music!

We couldn't afford to do much but made it to the zoo on the wednesday, which was epic! The pandas were amazing and so cute! A baby was born 12 weeks ago but you could only see it on a screen as it was too young to come out! We watched elephants get a Mani and pedi. We saw flamingos, rhinos, hippos, lions, a tiger, gorillas and monkeys! We got the cable car across the zoo and back again. It was a scorching day. We had a pack lunch bagel for lunch. On the way home we walked around the beautiful Balboa Park which had lots of museums and galleries. It was very Spanish influenced architecture with roads and buildings called Prado (mums maiden name)! It was a gorgeous walk with lots to see.

We went to Mission and Pacific Beach and ate at Joes Crab Shack, which was fun and yum! Neil and I shared a steam pot! I liked using all the tools to crack open the crab claws and getting the meat out! the weather wasn't too good so we couldnt swim!

We went to see Ted when we couldn't find a pool for some shade and air con! We met up with Yaritza on our last night which was a great night! We got picked up and had a tour of the districts looking for our gastro truck (gourmet food truck) dinner in the street (an american phenomenon I'd been dying to experience)! Really tasty chicken shwarma which was marinated grilled chicken with salad and pita and homemade sauce. We then got to meet Suki, Yaritza's pug, she was beautiful and so cute I wanted to take her home. It was so hard to leave her in the apartment when we went out! Yaritza lives in San Diegos gay district so we went on a mini gay bar crawl which was lots of fun. We ended in a desert restaurant (only the best as Yaritza is studying to be a pastry chef)! Yaritza and I shared an indulgent chocolate cake which came with a malt chocolate milkshake! So good! We walked back to Yaritza's awesome gated apartment and picked up Suki who came for the ride as we got a lift home.

San Diego was lots of fun and we missed a few key sights like Coronado beach and hotel but it just means we have a reason to go back!