It's fun to stay at the...

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We took a greyhound south from LA to continue the festivities in San Diego. Finally, after travelling all year we managed to stay at a YMCA (500 West) and it wasn't half bad. In fact, it was built in 1924 as the Army YMCA (there's lots of military still in San Diego) but now it's really just a 'hybrid hotel' (according to their literature)...no we didn't understand the difference either!

We took in the sights: Santa Fe station, maritime museum and harbour (where they've got a very cool cold war soviet submarine), Embarcadero waterfront area (where the large cruise ships and also the USS Midway) dock, Seaport Village, the Gaslamp quarter (where we made it to the Hard Rock Cafe in time for happy hour margaritas)...

Also, we spent a day at the 'world-famous' zoo with it's amazing pandas (and cub), hippos, 3 types of otter (American River, Cape Clawless and African spotted-neck), really cool and weird anteaters and some reminders of our trip so far (wombats, koalas, tree kangaroos, kiwi bird)...

Yesterday, we took the trolley to the old town and then caught a bus out to Point Loma for amazing views of the city, the Cabrillo monument (marking the first european footfall on California), one of the first lighthouses on the west coast and some amazing critters in the wild (bluebirds, squirrels, lizards, rabbits, hummingbirds and luckily none of the rattlesnakes that the park information leaflets warned to look out for!). We ended the day with some amazing pizza and a bona fide bottle of Italian wine at 'Sammy's Woodfire Pizza' (highly recommended) joint in town - told you we've been living it up!

This afternoon, we managed to squeeze in the Museum of Contemporary Art (their abstract installations were interesting) before missing our greyhound (we checked-in too late but managed to grab the next bus and make our connection in downtown LA anyway, so it didn't matter!).

And finally, if there's any Anchorman fans out there, we couldn't leave without saying, "Stay classy, San Diego!".

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