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Published: February 14th 2007
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Our first day in San Diego consisted two parts. The first was a walk downtown and the second was a superbowl party. Firstly to downtown. This is one of the nicer cities we have visited thus far mainly because of the weather. The whole time we were there it didn’t get below about 10C. Downtown is really nice with a Gaslamp Quarter devoted to the historic section and a riverfront with parks and shops. We walked through both areas before heading to Balboa Park which is where the zoo is located. We didn’t go in but we walked around the park which has some cool Spanish architecture amidst some manicured gardens. After that we went back to the hostel for a superbowl party they had organised with a free keg. The keg lasted to the end of the game which gave us plenty of time to get rather tanked. We ended up ignoring the stupid sport that is American football and started playing drinking games which was heaps more interesting. At the hostel we kept noticing that the staff were constantly leaving for “staff parties”, we eventually figured out that this was covert for “dope smoking” which explained their very spaced
out behaviour. After the superbowl we kicked on until the early hours of the morning.
After some free breakfast of eggs, pancakes and toast we headed on south of the border down Mexico way for a day of sightseeing in Tijuana which is only about 30mins from San Diego. Heidi, an Austrian tourist who we met the night before joined us today in Tijuana which is an absolute hole. We went through downtown Tijuana at about 10:30am and nothing was open so we headed for a couple of statues and monuments just out of the downtown district. That is, until we were stopped and I.D’d by the local police who all carry M16 automatic weapons. They told us to keep moving and that the shopping centre nearby was “secure”. This was a little freaky so we continued our travels to the statues (which were rather unimpressive) and then back into downtown for lunch. We found a place with $1 Coronas and as soon as you order them they bring some free tequila shots. This was more like it with myself and nick drinking $1 Coronas and Heidi with her 2 for 1 margaritas we were set. We stayed there
a while and then headed back to the border via the duty free where we each purchased a 1 litre bottle of Canadian Club for $8 a bottle. BARGAIN!! One thing we did notice in Tijuana is that there are a lot of dentists and pharmacies that sell everything from ibuprofen (like nurofen) to viagra which is apparently dirt cheap there. Nick told me.
It was back to Nick and myself for today’s excursion to the “World Famous San Diego Zoo”. It’s not much better than Perth’s zoo apart from the fact that it is about 3 times the size and has a larger range and amount of animals. Ok, so Perth Zoo pales into insignificance in comparison to this monster animal sanctuary. They have everything from every corner of the globe including pandas, koalas, gazelles, tigers, lions, elephants, giraffes, springbok, warthogs and the list goes on. One thing they don’t have is a kangaroo. They couldn’t even find an animal that wanders around Aussie streets (according to the yanks). We got to the zoo relatively early and stayed until close and just fitted everything in, it is just massive.
We became 3 again today as the resident
Moroccan from the hostel joined us at Seaworld. This place has everything you could possibly name from the sea as well as a couple of rides and a dolphin and killer whale show. We went on the Journey to Atlantis a few times before heading off to look at some animals. We started at the beluga whale enclosure where the guide asked the audience what the main predator of the whale was. Nicks quick response was Japanese. Very true but not the answer she was looking for but it was classic Gell. We went round to the other enclosures including sharks, sea lions, turtles, otters and manutees among others before heading to the free beer tastings. This might sound strange but the park is owned by Annheiser-Busch who specialize in tasteless American beer and in particular the Budweiser range. After a few tasters we headed to the water rapids ride and then to the dolphin show followed by the Shamu killer whale show, both of which are amazing. We ended up by going on Journey to Atlantis a few more times making our grand total 6 times.
We headed out of San Diego for Los Angeles the next day.
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Adam
non-member comment
Corona's!!!
Nice cheap corona's hey!! But did they bother with the lemon??