We had a great time, and so did the kids. Many thanks to April's folks and my parents for watching our three goofballs, enabling us to take this trip.
It was a vacation full of fun places, meals and experiences, too many to recap in blog form. But here are a few highlights:
We took a Segway tour of San Diego, riding these crazy machines through downtown, the park and along the waterfront. There are two goals when you ride one of these things for the first time:
1) Stay alive
2) Don't die
But we got used to riding around and managed to see the city without mortally wounding ourselves: the ultimate win-win.
We visited Old Town San Diego and the famous Whaley House, which is supposedly haunted. Their proof? Well there are several fuzzy photos that have been taken and once Regis Philbin once stayed there and swears he saw a ghost. Yeah, I was totally convinced too after hearing that...
We took a tour of the USS Midway, well we took a 10% tour of the USS Midway. Let me explain.
When walking up to the ticket booth where people were forking over $17 bucks each to board the vessel, we saw some very old, faded signs that said "Ask About Free Bay Access." So we walked up to the nearest retired Navy volunteer who smiled and said, "Hi there! What can I do for you folks?" We replied, "Hi, what can you tell us about the Bay Access?"
His tone and facial expression notably changed sour. "Oh," he grumbled, "You'll need to go talk to the ticket booth. They'll have to call someone to let you up."
"Ok, thanks," we said and went to the ticket booth. An older lady with matching purple eye shadow/fingernails/jewelry gave us a friendly greeting. "Hi, two tickets today?!" she asked. "No, we're interested in the Bay Access," we answered.
"Oh," she soured. "Well, did they tell you what you're going to see?" she asked in the most patronizing tone possible while covering 90% of a small map of the ship with her hands. "That's fine," we responded, determined now to board the ship these people were trying so hard to keep us from.
"Well, I have to see if anyone's available, hold on," she said, closing the window and getting on the radio. We were then directed to a separate stairwell, which one worker tried to keep us from going up and given access to the deck of the aircraft carrier with a full beautiful view of the bay. We even had a personal escort named "John," who made sure we didn't run off and tour the rest of the boat and only looked at the "free" stuff.
We walked around for about 20 minutes and then left with a great experience, $34 still in our pockets and several ex-military personnel frustrated that they couldn't have us court marshalled.
We also enjoyed the famous San Diego Zoo, Sea World, some great dining at the Gaslamp Quarter, fantastic weather and views and quite possibly the best breakfast place ever at Richard Walker's Pancake House. All in all, a great time.
The first day into the trip our camera broke, but we ended up getting a new one that took pretty good pictures. You can see all of them by clicking here.
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