Ronnie Reagan, Hard Rock & Shamu

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We’ve had a busy couple of days in San Diego since our zoo experience. Yesterday, we spent the whole day and evening downtown, taking in the busy Gas Lamp Quarter with its massive array of eateries and shops (I know what you’re thinking and she was really quite disciplined) and then concentrating on the waterfront, which is vast.

We hadn’t quite realised before we got here just what a large and significant military base this place is, the base alone housing some 35,000 people. We saw three aircraft carriers alone, one being the Ronald Reagan, one of the largest Nimnitz (or is that Numbnuts?) class vessels afloat. Just about every street corner seems to be occupied by a collection of ‘vets’ proudly sporting their Navy Seals baseball caps and staring all glassy-eyed at the hardware. We took a boat trip round the harbour (narrated by, you guessed it, an ex Navy hero) which was hugely informative – and very windy - and then got the ferry to Coronado, where we took a brisk walk across the peninsula to the Hotel Del Coronado (to see where we should have stayed!). It was amazing and we will most definitely be coming here again at some point – you just have to get used to the random comings and goings of all manner of US fighter planes overhead! We then set off to stroll back to the ferry before it left only to realise that it was a little further than we had remembered. So we walked a bit quicker. Then we jogged a bit. Then we sprinted the last bit and got there just before it left. As you can imagine, everything was completely my fault and the return crossing was spent in silence. So we limped to the Hard Rock Café and cheered ourselves up with obscene amounts of food (again, just replace pound signs with dollar signs).

Are you sure this is the ferry?
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We were also intrigued by how central the San Diego airport is. The planes come and go at the rate of 300 per day, one every 90 seconds – and all look as if they are going to land in the middle of the high street!

Filled up the tank with ‘gas’ on the way back to the hotel which set us back $35 (about £18). When we got back, we couldn’t help noticing that the occupant of the room next door has had his Do Not Disturb sign out since we arrived three days ago and the free daily newspapers are beginning to back up under the door. I wonder how long it will take the prison governors to realise he’s either checked out or passed on. Back in our room, we were hit by the unmistakeable aroma of damp as the air conditioning unit had decided to leak everywhere. Too tired to do anything about it though…and we move on tomorrow.

The runway had better turn up soon...
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Today we decided that we haven’t had nearly enough theme park action so far so made a B-Line for Sea World. We’ve been to the one in Florida a couple of times and this was every bit as good. Indeed, we even got Jackie to go on Atlantis, the big water roller coaster. That plan completely backfired though because it was me who got soaked.

Tomorrow we're off to La Jolla and then to Palm Springs...