San Diego - The Other Stuff

Road Trip to Los Angeles

On Tuesday, we took a little road trip and went up to Los Angeles to visit friends. You may remember that one of Curt's friends, Peter, lives in Pasadena - our last trip to California was to be at Peter's wedding. So, we went to visit Peter and his wife Shauna and have dinner with them.

We arrived downtown L.A. around 3pm, and after a quick visit with Pete at his office, we went to check out some of the different districts downtown.

Right across from Pete's office is Pershing Square, home to 'Downtown on Ice'. Although I would never actually skate on one of these 'ice surfaces', I can't help but stand and watch the 'skaters' for a few minutes, and it's always a good photo op!

We ended up checking out the jewellery district and the fashion district while we were downtown. I wasn't impressed - I'm just not a city girl I guess.

We went back to meet Pete at 5pm, when he was done work - then we went up to check out the rooftop bar and patio at his office building. It was chilly, so we didn't stay for a drink, but again, there was a good photo op.
We had a really nice evening at Pete and Shauna's - they made us a delicious dinner and then we played some cards and visited. It was great to have a chance to visit them, especially because they're not coming to Ontario for Christmas.

Coronado - The Hotel

On Thursday, following our round of golf at Coronado Golf Course, we went to see the historic Hotel del Coronado.

Whenever we travel, I check the book '1000 Things to See Before You Die' for local attractions - Hotel del Coronado was one of the places listed for the San Diego area. I didn't know much about the hotel before reading about it in the book, and online, but it did look familiar when I saw pictures of it (it has been featured in movies and books).

Does it look familiar to you?

The place is HUGE, so I had a hard time getting a good picture.

While checking out the grounds of the hotel, I found the perfect spot to coach figure skating...

Not too shabby, right? Finish skating and you're steps from the beach and ocean! However, you can see how wet it is...it was a beautiful sunny day, so the ice was getting pretty soft.

Downtown San Diego

Thursday was a pretty busy day - after spending a good portion of the day in Coronado, we then went to check out downtown San Diego (well, parts of it anyway).

We had talked about checking out the U.S.S. Midway - an aircraft carrier turned floating museum (it has over 60 exhibits and 25 restored aircraft) - but our time was limited, so we just took some pictures from afar.

We also got to see the statue 'Unconditional Surrender' - a 25 foot statue that commemorates a famous WWII photograph.

After taking a few pictures of Curt and I standing beside the statue, I admitted that I wanted to be one of the typical tourists and take a picture of the two of us re-enacting the kiss...

I didn't do a very good job of matching the nurses pose.

And with that, I'm done my posts about our trip to San Diego! I'm way behind in posting these, but I know I will be glad to have these to look back on. I LOVED San Diego, and I know I will always have fond memories of this trip!