West Coast swing: San Diego I

Community Highlights Family Travel West Coast swing: San Diego I

The drive south from Los Angeles to San Diego is one of the more pleasant we've made on an interstate highway in the US. The highway was lined on either side with housing developments whose units were eerily identical, except that they were often constructed on terraced hillsides that created a strange similarity with the ancient towns of Sicily. I had to wonder if I was the only person who ever saw the resemblance. Unfortunately it never occurred to me to pull the car over and take a picture of these peculiar planned communities, but here's what I was reminded of.

The other remarkable sight from the highway were the mountain ranges, always a formidable presence somewhere in the background. Being used to the east coast where the terrain is generally flat anywhere near the seaboard, the mountains seemed quite incongruous yet beautiful.

We spent New Year's Eve with friends of Mei Ling in one of those cookie cutter developments inland from the town of Oceanside. Oceanside itself had little worth seeing, but since we were there anyway we made a brief stop at Mission San Luis Rey, a two hundred year old Spanish church that was originally established as one of twenty-one California missions that served to extended the power of the Spanish kingdom to the new frontier.

The only other place we visited around Oceanside was the Museum of Making Music, in the neighboring coastal community of Carlsbad. This was quite a fun museum oriented towards kids, and I think ours learned quite a lot about instruments from the interactive exhibits and from experimenting in the small studio.

We'd had amazing success with food halls in Los Angeles, so naturally when we arrived in San Diego we made a beeline for lunch at Liberty Public Market, one of San Diego's two food halls. The hall opened in 2016 in the Liberty Station commercial area, and contains about twenty small restaurants. There was a lot of energy and a great variety of food although not quite to the degree of the big Los Angeles food halls. We mixed it up with some Italian arancini, seafood, and Cajun.

Our Airbnb was another great choice, an apartment in an incongruous complex of Victorian houses downtown wedged between the Gaslamp Quarter and Little Italy. The exterior was full of pleasant little touches like wicker furniture and a collection of succulents growing in creative pottery.

All the farmers markets from Wednesday through Friday were in the evenings, which worked out great with our schedule. On our first night we drove out to Ocean Beach, an eclectic residential neighborhood at the base of the Point Loma peninsula west of downtown. It was more like a night market than a farmers market, although there were a few produce stands. The emphasis was more on prepared foods and crafts, and there was a really good live band. The food stalls were very diverse and we had more than enough options to provide a satisfying dinner. It was probably the closest thing we'd encountered in the US to a Taiwan-style night market.

We still had a little energy left after the night market so we drove to Seaport Village, an outdoor shopping and dining complex by the San Diego Marina. There turned out not to be much going on at night, although a few interesting places were still open. The strangest was a store almost completely devoted to socks. How do they stay in business in San Diego where everyone wears sandals and flip-flops? We decided if we had time we'd return during daylight hours for the views of Coronado Island I'd read about.

The Gaslamp Quarter is San Diego's historic heart and soul. After decades of neglect, the neighborhood was revitalized in the 1980's and is now home to some of San Diego's best restaurants as well as numerous historic buildings and the eponymous lamps (which of course are electric).

The breakfast place I chose from TripAdvisor turned out to be outstanding, both in terms of food and decor. It was truly one of the most beautifully designed and ornate restaurants I can remember, down to the most minimal detail. Coupled with the magnificent buildings outside, it left a lasting impression of the Gaslight Quarter as having a very sophisticated design aesthetic.

A short walk from breakfast we encountered a splendid outdoor plaza called Horton Plaza Park, which had just completed a major renovation three years earlier. The design was magnificent with eight towering, angulated metal light supports arranged in a semi-circle around a sunken plaza with a pop-jet fountain in the center. Surrounding us was an interesting juxtaposition of modern skyscrapers and historic edifices. The plaza serves multiple purposes as a performance venue, relaxation spot, and unfortunately as a homeless hangout.

The San Diego Zoo is one of the largest and most famous zoos in the world, and shares top billing for local animal attractions with SeaWorld. I had figured we would have time for both and opted to do the zoo first, since it seemed easier to plan. After all, a zoo is a zoo, right? Of course, the logistics were a little more complicated than most zoos. For example, the parking lot alone was the size of some other zoos we've visited. Fortunately we found a ticket line that moved quickly but wow, those tickets were expensive. Two hundred bucks later we rolled through the turnstiles and began a very long journey that took us through maybe a quarter of the zoo. I'd recommend doing some research in advance if you're planning on visiting this zoo, because it is not possible to get small kids around the entire place in a day. Spenser got tired after about an hour and I loaded him on my back for a nap. This blog may be called Babies in Backpacks, but now that my youngest weighs over thirty pounds and I'm pushing fifty I might need to change up my brand. By the time Spenser had woken up an hour later, I was feeling a knife stabbing into each of my shoulder blades. I got a brief respite while we ate the sandwiches we had brought with us, and then it was time to load up Ian. The kids enjoyed some of the exhibits, but they're not really zoo lovers and at the end I was wishing we had chosen SeaWorld instead.

The highlights of the zoo were a very active troop of baboons in a large, natural-looking enclosure and the Skyfari aerial tram. By the time we stumbled on the tram and realized it would take us directly to the exit, we abandoned all thought of queuing up for the pandas. We'll catch them in Hunan one day. The Skyfari provided great views of the zoo, Balboa Park, and even downtown San Diego.

The Thursday afternoon farmers market was in North Park, another pleasant residential neighborhood northeast of the zoo. The market was a little bit of a letdown after the previous night's extravaganza at Ocean Beach. There was just a solitary musician instead of a rock band, and many of the booths were repeats from the previous night. However, I did get to try some food from Mozambique which was a first.

For dinner we went to the Little Italy Food Hall, on the short pedestrian street known as Piazza della Famiglia. The piazza was a beautiful sight with illuminated buildings and a colorful Christmas tree persisting from the previous month. The food hall itself was underwhelming and underpopulated, but we managed to put together enough of a dinner to carry us through to the next day.

This featured blog entry was written by zzlangerhans from the blog Fledgling Explorers.
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