We're in San Diego!
Sep. 24th, 2013 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73We're belatedly celebrating 17 years of marriage this year by taking a vacation that's Just Us - no family visiting, just doing things by ourselves. We haven't had a vacation like that in over 3 years, and it was time. We decided on San Diego - we arrived today, and plan to hit the zoo, the Safari Park, and we've got tickets for a whale watch Thursday. We'll be here till Saturday. Anyway, here's the story so far.
We picked up our car at the Budget office near the airport, and would have been at the hotel a great deal faster had Budget not insisted we exit onto Pacific Coast Highway. PCH is a divided road that's kind of a mini-highway with traffic lights. You'd think that it would be easy to make a U-turn at the lights, but you'd be wrong, because at least on that part of PCH (as mentioned previously) San Diego does not believe in U-turns. By the time we finally got ourselves turned around (by exiting and then getting back on in the other direction), we had probably gone about as far as the hotel... but in the opposite direction. Oops! (We then made the mistake of ending up on city streets rather than the freeway, which made for more driving time. But we discovered an awesome-looking three-masted ship at the harbor, which we will be sure to take a closer look at in person in the next day or two.)
Our hotel is right near the base of Balboa Park, a large park that has all the city museums, the zoo, etc, and which was promised to be a nice place to walk. So after checking in, we decided to walk in the park a bit. It was a bit of a pain to get into the park in the first place, as there's a freeway to cross, but it wasn't too bad. The bottom of the park (the admittedly tiny tiny tiny bit of it we saw) was a bit of a disappointment. Someone's putting in a Horror Maze for Halloween, which is a great idea and I hope it goes well, but the maze construction area was cut off by a chain-link fence with black cloth interwoven, making it look rather like a construction zone. The early-80s building and grounds for the Horseshoe Club was similarly surrounded by chain-link fence, and both building and grounds looked like they could really use a lot of upkeep. There was a reasonable green lawn with trees that took up ~100 yards between two access roads, but because of its immediate surroundings, it felt sort of small. (Again: saw only tiny tiny bit of park. Didn't get as far north as the museums and zoo and stuff. Will drive in that direction whichever day we go to the zoo.)
After a while, it felt like we'd walked for a while but hadn't really seen that much of the park, so we turned around and headed downtown. Our hotel is kind of on the outskirts of downtown. At 5PM, there were a lot of empty and/or abandoned-looking buildings, a moderate number of homeless, and some graffiti. It felt very quiet, in a dead/dying sort of way. Even when we got to 'the real downtown' in the Gaslight District, everything that wasn't fancy restaurants also felt fairly inner-city and a little squalid. (Lots of pawnshops, paycheck-advance places, and the like, all of it kind of dirty in the same way that a fair amount of downtown San Francisco is kind of dirty.)
Our tentative conclusion is that, like San Francisco, San Diego is really struggling in the current economy. It seems like, as a tourist, you're probably coming for the specific attractions that San Diego offers, rather than the experience of the city itself.
One definite good thing so far: We had dinner at Katsuya, a somewhat fancy Japanese place. They make a big deal of the fact that they have four different kitchens for preparing the special things on the menu. Maybe it makes a difference? But the food was REALLY tasty. We had the Baked Crab Hand Roll, which was really wonderful, the mixed green salad which was perfectly fine, and the salmon teriyaki, in which the chefs proved that they had super-good fish to start with and they knew how to treat it with respect. It was lovely and moist with a fairly high natural fat content (which is how I like my salmon) with a crisp outside, and was served on a bed of pureed.. um, something or other? I'm guessing cauliflower or parsnips? with too much pepper if you ate it by itself, but which went beautifully with the semisweetness of the teriyaki and salmon. We shared everything, which is how the restaurant intends things to be done. The final bill for the two of us was $40, entirely reasonable, and we were, somewhat surprisingly, full at the end of the meal. I would totally go there again if I lived around here, because they had a lot of things that I'd like to try.
We picked up our car at the Budget office near the airport, and would have been at the hotel a great deal faster had Budget not insisted we exit onto Pacific Coast Highway. PCH is a divided road that's kind of a mini-highway with traffic lights. You'd think that it would be easy to make a U-turn at the lights, but you'd be wrong, because at least on that part of PCH (as mentioned previously) San Diego does not believe in U-turns. By the time we finally got ourselves turned around (by exiting and then getting back on in the other direction), we had probably gone about as far as the hotel... but in the opposite direction. Oops! (We then made the mistake of ending up on city streets rather than the freeway, which made for more driving time. But we discovered an awesome-looking three-masted ship at the harbor, which we will be sure to take a closer look at in person in the next day or two.)
Our hotel is right near the base of Balboa Park, a large park that has all the city museums, the zoo, etc, and which was promised to be a nice place to walk. So after checking in, we decided to walk in the park a bit. It was a bit of a pain to get into the park in the first place, as there's a freeway to cross, but it wasn't too bad. The bottom of the park (the admittedly tiny tiny tiny bit of it we saw) was a bit of a disappointment. Someone's putting in a Horror Maze for Halloween, which is a great idea and I hope it goes well, but the maze construction area was cut off by a chain-link fence with black cloth interwoven, making it look rather like a construction zone. The early-80s building and grounds for the Horseshoe Club was similarly surrounded by chain-link fence, and both building and grounds looked like they could really use a lot of upkeep. There was a reasonable green lawn with trees that took up ~100 yards between two access roads, but because of its immediate surroundings, it felt sort of small. (Again: saw only tiny tiny bit of park. Didn't get as far north as the museums and zoo and stuff. Will drive in that direction whichever day we go to the zoo.)
After a while, it felt like we'd walked for a while but hadn't really seen that much of the park, so we turned around and headed downtown. Our hotel is kind of on the outskirts of downtown. At 5PM, there were a lot of empty and/or abandoned-looking buildings, a moderate number of homeless, and some graffiti. It felt very quiet, in a dead/dying sort of way. Even when we got to 'the real downtown' in the Gaslight District, everything that wasn't fancy restaurants also felt fairly inner-city and a little squalid. (Lots of pawnshops, paycheck-advance places, and the like, all of it kind of dirty in the same way that a fair amount of downtown San Francisco is kind of dirty.)
Our tentative conclusion is that, like San Francisco, San Diego is really struggling in the current economy. It seems like, as a tourist, you're probably coming for the specific attractions that San Diego offers, rather than the experience of the city itself.
One definite good thing so far: We had dinner at Katsuya, a somewhat fancy Japanese place. They make a big deal of the fact that they have four different kitchens for preparing the special things on the menu. Maybe it makes a difference? But the food was REALLY tasty. We had the Baked Crab Hand Roll, which was really wonderful, the mixed green salad which was perfectly fine, and the salmon teriyaki, in which the chefs proved that they had super-good fish to start with and they knew how to treat it with respect. It was lovely and moist with a fairly high natural fat content (which is how I like my salmon) with a crisp outside, and was served on a bed of pureed.. um, something or other? I'm guessing cauliflower or parsnips? with too much pepper if you ate it by itself, but which went beautifully with the semisweetness of the teriyaki and salmon. We shared everything, which is how the restaurant intends things to be done. The final bill for the two of us was $40, entirely reasonable, and we were, somewhat surprisingly, full at the end of the meal. I would totally go there again if I lived around here, because they had a lot of things that I'd like to try.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-25 06:14 am (UTC)Pacific Coast Highway is a regular street without splits when you get out of San Diego itself and head north.
Downtown San Diego is kind of a mosaic of really nice vs scummy. It tends to be nice when you're closer to the ocean, the convention center, Santa Fe Depot, and the Gaslamp. Around the ballpark is where it starts to turn dirty and you see weird people and/or homeless.
There is some really interesting stuff in Balboa Park if you know where to look. There's a giant outdoor pipe organ somewhere and apparently some lady comes out every so often to play it. There's the international village, where there are huts representing different countries. If you like ocean animals, Sea World isn't far. Coronado is a popular destination for tourists and locals, though I've never been there.
Whether San Diego is struggling depends on what area you're in and who you talk to. La Jolla (the area I'm in now, about 10 minutes north of Balboa Park) is doing well, the local mall is full and bustling, and there isn't a whole lot of that "closed down" look you might find in other places. On the other hand, the metro area has more of what you'd find in big cities, both good and bad. But yes, San Diego definitely has a set of "attractions" that are marketed to tourists.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-25 03:53 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to walking around by the water, probably tomorrow. We've got reservations for a whale watch in the AM, but that only goes till 1.
I'm glad to know that Pacific Coast Highway behaves itself better a little later north.
My grandfather lived in La Jolla much of his life, though I never got to visit him. My very vague impression is that La Jolla was nice (Grandpa had money, so he would have chosen a nice area).
no subject
Date: 2013-09-25 04:13 pm (UTC)La Jolla is a really nice, upscale area. I like it a lot, but the cost of living is very high - one reason why I'm moving out. Maybe I'll move back there once I have a car and have settled a year or two into my new job, but we'll see.
The Embarcadero and pier behind the Convention Center is a nice walkway if you like walking along the ocean. Concerts are held there in the summer, but the season has ended. Seaport Village is also a nice little walking area, and sometimes musicians hang out there from what I've heard, but all the shops are kitschy and touristy.