Balboa Park and glamorous San Diego at night

An unbelievable park

San Diego really has many attractions; one of the main ones is Balboa Park, a really big urban cultural park. It hosted the 1915-16 Panama - California Exposition as well as the 1935-36 California Pacific International Exhibition.  It has been maintained in tiptop condition and has gardens, walking paths, museums and theatres.  There are also informal markets and many stalls of different kinds.  It looks like what one would expect of a magic castle, like what one hoped castles looked like until one actually saw one.

Wendy Mayer and Dan Corbett kindly took me along on an outing there.  The few hours we spent there was really not enough. Like Dan said, one could spend several days exploring this amazing park doing a part of it on a day only.  We never even had a look at the world famous zoo or the marine aquarium.

The main art museum

Wendy in the park

Having gaped at the magnificent buildings housing so many treasures we walked on past a group of musicians on drums such as I have never seen before.  Steel drums are hammered until they have many rounded dents all of which give different sounds.  Used skilfully they produce beautiful music.

For a moment I thought they were marimbas.

We walked on to the succulent and rose gardens.  I never used to like succulents coming as I do from a dry climate myself.  This is a rather special garden though and really big.

Looking out over the landscape one realises that California is bone dry.

What an amazing plant.

After the succulents the roses were, well,  pretty.

Lovely, endless gardens

The greenhouse

So many beautiful orchids.

Wandering about was thirsty work so we stopped at - a first for me - a lemonade stand.  On this hot day it was delicious.

San Diego at night

So you think Balboa park is magnificent? You should see the city at night! Everything is lit up in carnival colours.  Suddenly the entrance to the Gaslamp Quarter is transfigured, the bridge across the railway lines looks pretty and even the bicycle rickshaws are amazingly colourful.

The view from our hotel window.

Anybody for a ride?

The gardens on the bayfront.

A well-lit bridge

Another day in San Diego: the mission

Mission San Diego

On our second day in San Diego we had breakfast at the "Broken Yolk", a restaurant we discovered in the historic Gaslamp Quarter quite close to the hotel.  We loved that they just kept pouring us coffee at no additional charge.  I asked for a Coke and got the largest glassful one can imagine.  It must have contained about a litre! Americans do not know what "small" is when it comes to drinks. In most restaurants one is allowed to refill one's glass as often as one wants to, for same basic price. Often one can help oneself at the soda fountain (Pieter tried a mix of different sodas - just because he could).

Gaslamp Quarter

Our favourite breakfast spot in San Diego

Chris de Wet and I with a take away cold drink as I could not finish my drink in the restaurant.

We then went for a walk on the bayfront having used a pedestrian bridge across the train rails (the city trains are called trolleys).  There is a promenade along the bayfront and many people were lounging  about.  There were joggers, families with children and couples all enjoying themselves.  It was another glorious day.  We admired the gardens, the friendship statue and the beautiful yachts moored there.

The pedestrian bridge across the rails.

Pieter and I (Helen) on the promenade.

Part of the bayfront is called the Embarcadero.

The friendship statue.

We headed for the trolleys in order to go to the San Diego Mission with Wendy Mayer and her husband, Dan Corbett.  We did not really understand why the mission is special, but soon learnt that it reflects an important period of history.  San Diego went through several periods of occupation, first the Kumegaay Indians, then the Spanish Mission followed by the Mexican period and then the American military.  The main economic engines today are military and defence related.

Public transport in San Diego is very good.

The mission is a short walk from this station.

Pieter and I in front of the mission.

The padres at work.

King Carlos III of Spain wanted settlements to be established along the coast of Alta California in order to claim the land for Spain. His viceroy, who had to make this happen, wanted it to appear that the motives for this plan were religious and not political and so the Franciscan order of Catholic priests led by Padre Juniperro Serra was chosen to accompany the military and to be responsible for converting the native population to christianity.  Consequently the Mission San Diego de Alcala was founded in July 1769.

The mission church on the inside.

A touching Pieta in the courtyard

These pictures reflect the rather spartan lifestyle of the priests.

A road, which is marked by iconic lanterns, linking the different missions was established.

San Diego

A seaside excursion

We arrived on Thursday, 20 November 2014 having flown for more than twenty-one hours: seventeen hours from Oliver Tambo, Johannesburg, to Atlanta in America and then a bit more than four hours from Atlanta to San Diego.  We made our way to the Hilton Gaslamp Quarter adjacent to the Convention Center, which was of course where Pieter and Chris were headed for the conference. Strange about this was that we had won ten hours - in South Africa it was already evening but we were at the hotel at around eleven in the morning.  Luckily our room was ready.

The convention centre in San Diego

We were a little hungry and after quickly cleaning up a little we went looking for somewhere to eat. Chris (Chris de Wet, Pieter's colleague) was in the Hyatt, a different hotel, where we had agreed to meet him.  We headed further along the promenade to a place we had spotted from the shuttle. We were surprised to find that this was the restaurant where the seedy bar scene in "Top Gun" had been shot.  We were after all in California, home of  film making like almost nowhere else.

This is where the seedy bar scene was filmed.

After our ample and fairly good meal (expensive but we quickly learned to accept that food was more pricey than in South Africa), we ambled along the bayfront in the direction of a big sailing ship.

We were bone tired but going back to the hotel would only have meant keeling over right away and that would not have been useful for overcoming the jetlag.

The weather was a very pleasant 20-21C despite it being winter. We passed an aircraft carrier which is used as a museum for aircraft.  This was super exciting, but we decided to leave it for another day. The sailing ship turned out to be part of another museum containing six of seven vessels with two submarines amongst them.  This proved to be our undoing.What an excellent way to spend a few hours.

A wonderful maritime museum

There is a replica of an old sailing ship which was used in "Pirates of the Caribbean" - what a stunning ship.  It sways in the water where it lies reminding one how insecure one must have felt on such a ship in days gone by.

Next we clambered aboard the big sailing ship we had originally spotted.  It still goes sailing and is far bigger than the one we had got onto first.  This visit was quite educational as one can look at the different holds and see where people would eat and sleep as well as store goods.

The most fun we had was on the Russian submarine.  It is quite narrow and the interior is cramped. To move through it one has to climb through holes about a metre in diameter.  One has to really watch one's head as well as there is not much headroom.

Next we got onto the American submarine.  This was used for research and not for warfare so the difference between the two submarines is big.  It is way more orderly and neat and although spending time enclosed between iron walls below the surface is still a frightening prospect this looks at least more doable.

The periscope still works.

There are more ships but we decided the Belvedere, a ferry from bygone years, would be our last stop.  This ship still has lovely wooden benches and big windows for sightseeing.

We made our way back to the hotels resisting the temptation of getting onto one of the rickshaws (bicycles with carriages for about three persons each).