Take Me Out To The Ballgame

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So, San Diego - our last stop on the US leg of our trip. We arrived safely with no problems on Greyhound and our hostel is in a perfect location, right in the middle of the Gaslamp Quarter which is the historic heart of San Diego and where all the bars and restaurants are. It's also walking distance to Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres baseball team - more of that later.

Our first day was spent wandering around town and taking the ferry across San Diego bay to admire the views which are lovely. We saw a huge aircraft carrier with a load of sailors going past and a helicopter practising rescuing dummies that they chucked into the the water which was pretty cool. We also had fish and chips by the bay which was yum even though they weren't real fish shop chips. Never mind. In the evening we went to the cinema with our new buddy, Nick from London - good fun and very much a Londoner with a great sarcastic sense of humour so we had a good laugh. The film (The Brothers Solomon) was the worst film in the world ever and meant that we had to hit the nearest bar afterwards to recover. It was happy hour all night and the DJ mixed the videos as well as the songs which was very cool.

On the Friday night we went to watch the baseball game which took 4 hours to finish - it can be quite a slow game to start with but it did pick up in the end and the atmosphere was good and the crowd's chants were pretty comedy. The San Diego team lost but we did get to eat hotdogs and ice-cream out of a baseball-hat shaped bowl which was quite exciting!

Next day, we got up early and headed out to SeaWorld. Acting like big kids all day we saw all the shows with Shamu, the high-jumping dolphins and the sealions. We also held starfish, touched huge bat rays and stroked dolphins which was the best bit. We went to the 4D show where they squirt you with water and some helicopter-simulator thing which crashed into the Arctic. We had the best time!

Our Sunday was spent wandering around Balboa Park which is the biggest urban park in America apparently. It has some lovely old buildings and a huge pipe organ and is a nice place to chill out. We had some lunch by a big fountain and took the trolley around the park before heading back downtown to do some last-minute shopping for souvenirs and, more importantly, cheap clothes for ourselves! Our last proper evening in America was spent having a nice Mexican meal then heading to a rock-and-roll bar with duelling pianos (and a happy hour) which were great fun to sing along to.

We've had a great time in San Diego and have decided it one of the only places we've been that we could live - the weather has been lovely and apparently is like this most of the year and they hardly ever have rain. Plus, we could never get to all the bars unless we live here so it seems like that's what we'll have to do!

Our final, final stop is a hotel next to LAX airport - we decided that we needed a good night's sleep before our early morning flight the next day but then realised that our flight leaves at 9.30pm not 9.30am so we have a whole day to kill. Could have been worse - at least we got the right day! Next time you hear from us we'll be Down Under!

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Comments

[C]

Kill the day with more bars?