Going back in time...Eleventh Day

Well, I'm making my first effort to re-create the trip blog. I WILL succeed.

July 17, 2007:

Picking up where I left off in San Diego, (which by the way, was named after Saint Didacus of Alcalá--more commonly known as San Diego--who was was a lay brother of the Order of Friars Minor, and not an animal part) in the morning Jason and I got up and went to the Hash House a Go Go for breakfast. We received this recommendation from John and Kristen. This place is midwest farm food on mega-amounts of HGH, or food GH or something. It has a rockabilly/punk feel about it. Each breakfast dish that we saw served that morning comes out on a white, oval platter about 3 feet long and a foot across at the widest point.

I ordered the smoked salmon, basil pesto, tomato and brie egg scramble which came with crispy breakfast potatoes and a biscuit, and Jason got the sage fried chicken eggs benedict which included spinach, smoked bacon, tomato, mozzarella and a chipotle cream. My salmon scramble was the best egg dish I've ever had in my life. I finished a little over half of it. There were a number of other tourists in the place and everyone kept leaning over to neighboring tables to see what other people had ordered. A nearby couple split a pancake that was about 18 inches across and 2 inches thick.

There are Hash Houses in SD, Las Vegas and now open in KC. You have to make an effort to go to one of them if you can.

After breakfast we knew that we had to walk it off a little before sitting in the car for a couple hours. We headed to Balboa Park to check it out. There are quite a number of interesting sights in the Park. One of the first things we stumbled across was a very nice bocce court with some games in progress. When we walked closer to check it out, one of the participants came over to say hello and recruit us for the club. I think they are looking for young blood to keep the club going. In all seriousness, though, it does look kind of fun. I think I got hooked on this genre of competition after watching curling in the last Winter Olympics. If anyone wants to go curling with me this winter there's a complex in MD that I want to go check out.

OK, tangent done. We then walked on to the museum area of the park. There are a number of cool museums that we didn't have time to see but I would like to next time I'm in town. The Museum of Man is pretty famous and there were several other exhibits including art galleries and a Globe Theater replica. The San Diego Zoo also borders Balboa Park, but we had to settle for the awesome stop at the Wild Animal Park.

Balboa Park was cool and a place that I look forward to checking out in greater detail. But we had to hit the road and head on to the City of Angels, or the LA greater metro area anyway. We hit I-5 and drove up the coast, which was a pretty nice drive. Saw a carrier a few miles offshore. Been there done that, though. (In another life I got to land on a carrier, spend the night and watch flight operations on the deck. Ask me if you're interested to hear about that.) We also drove past a number of really large houses with great views and no doubt manufactured drama being created and videotaped inside (i.e. we passed Laguna and Newport Beaches).

We made it to Phil and Janet's house in Hermosa Beach mid-afternoon that day. And while I hate commuting in the DC area, let's just say I'm not in a hurry to move to South Cali and have a 20 mile commute out there. Sheesh. Janet was stuck in jury duty til the evening, so we hung with Phil, had some libations (Phil makes a mean and delicious rum and coke) and told some stories. We also met the guard dogs, who while not too bad on the bite, had a hell of a bark.

We went down to the beach and saw the view down to Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes and up to Manhattan Beach at sunset. Absolutely stunning! We went to a great little Mexican place where they knew everyone on staff and had a great dinner. After dinner Jason and I walked around the beach bar area and found a place that had live band karaoke. We got there too late to sing (the line was real long) but it was cool too watch folks get up on stage with a live band and sing their favorite tunes. At the end of the night we caught a cab back and crashed in our respective rooms at Janet and Phil's. (They had separate rooms for us, which was the ultimate luxury on this trip.)

Another amazing day on the road and in California.