CA Days 34 – 38: So much San Diego
February 9th, 2008 |I met up with Craig at the Palms, a hotel/casino just a couple blocks from Tim’s place, for the ride to San Diego. To the point at 9am shook hands and immediately hit the road. Craig is in his 30s I guess, funny enough I didn’t ask him how old he is, but I think it doesn’t say much anyways. He is a dedicated kickboxer, going to training camps in Thailand and working two jobs, being a self-employed fitness trainer on one hand and an accounting-guy on the other.
He has some good views about his country and doesn’t mind hearing people’s honest opinions, as long as they don’t try to tell the americans what to do, in a way of “you should vote for this and that guy”, in a way of just seeing the foreign affairs part of the politics and ignoring the situation within the country. A good point. He is half german, but has never been there yet. He is heavily interested in the second world war and everything that comes with that. He is convinced that the americans did a good job back then.
After all I like this guy. Some of his views are different to mine and some political statements don’t quite match what I feel like, but who says that I know better, especially regarding the fact that the immigration situation in southern california is, due to the closeness of Mexico, hardly comparable to anything I know. While talking about meat and making fun of aggressive-I-shalth-convert-you-vegetarians I revealed my burger-tasting-plans, which Craig decided was a good reason for a stop at a Jack-In-The-Box for a Sirloin Steak Bacon Cheeseburger.
I came back to San Diego earlier than planned because I couldn’t find any more couches in Vegas, plus I realised that I wouldn’t be able to do anything of the surrounding sights without a car, so there was no real reason to stay any longer. This would have led to the fact that I was couchless before arrival again, so I posted another last-minute-request, this time in the San Diego CouchRequest group – with good success. Lilia got back to me and offered to put me up for those two nights.
Luck was on my side this time, so it turned out that Craig was about to go exactly to the area of San Diego where Lilia lives. Since she would be working until early evening I had some hours of time to kill, so Craig decided to take me on a little tour around Hillcrest, showing me some of the Art Deco buildings he likes so much and giving me a general idea on what the area is about. It’s a beautiful neighbourhood and there’s a lot of people with a lot of money there, but it’s also the gay part of town.
Don’t get me wrong, I still am not afraid of gay people, I just learned that if you’re not gay yourself you should think twice about spending your free time in the main gay areas. On my walking tour I did the usual thing: Looking out for a cafe with free WiFi to settle, check and answer mails, have a coffee, relax and studying my upcoming host’s profile a little more detailed. While it’s easy to find a cafe in the states it’s not nearly easy to find a nice cafe, one with seating, or even with mugs. Cups are the big trend and hardly any cafe serves a good old mug. Daniel’s Cafe, however, was one of those gems – seating, free WiFi and a real mug.
Later, when studying the area in my trusted Lonely Planet guide, it turns out that – what else? – Daniel’s Cafe is one of the recommended gay scene spots in whole San Diego. But despite the waiter obviously being gay there was nothing weird about that place. It was nice, comfortable, had style and no one tried to hit on me. There were women, men, straight couples, the ambience felt welcoming and it was a good cafe to stay. I wouldn’t mind recommending this place to anyone passing through hillcrest. However that didn’t stop Lilia from heaving some great fun when I told her where to pick me up.
She called, telling me that she would meet with Carissa, another San Diego Host, and a travelling CouchSurfer in a nice restaurant that had a sushi-special that night and if I wanted to join. I remembered Carissa – she was passing through Vienna last summer and wrote me a couchrequest, but we already had someone staying at the time and so I said no. Funny enough it turned out that Carissa remembered that too. I guess if you’re writing couch requests following a good scheme, including some studying of people’s profiles, you just don’t forget them all too soon.
The other couchsurfer was Blake, a very talkative and extroverted guy from Arkansas. He had a tiny rubber duck toy with him, “Ducky”, which later turned out was given to him from his 2yr old niece – because she couldn’t go with him, at least he should “take Ducky on some adventures”. Blake’s mission therefore was creating some adventures for Ducky. This day’s adventures should be “being part of a sushi platter” and “skiing”. Afterwards, when browsing his profile, I found out that he had an artificial leg, which I would’ve never recognized because he moved totally normal.
It’s funny to find stuff like that out AFTER you met a person. If I would’ve known before I probably would have seen him in a total different light, you know, thoughts like “that poor guy”, or whatever. But this way I got to know a guy like you and me, just he has an artificial leg. So what? A good lesson to learn. Lilia had to get up early the next day, so we headed back at around 10pm and directly went to sleep – she was tired of a long day, I was tired of a long ride through the desert and both of us were looking forward to catch some sleep.
My plan for tuesday was the San Diego Zoo. Lilia lives only a few hundred meters from Balboa Park, where the Zoo is located, so it should have been nothing more than a gentle walk there. Should have been already indicates that something went wrong, and that something was the strange layout of Balboa Park. There’s a huge street, Florida Drive, dividing it into an eastern and a western part. Basically those two parts are separate parks, the western one having the Zoo, the Museums and stuff like that, the eastern having a golf course, tennis courts and more of that kind of things.
Of course I walked in the park on the wrong side. After passing by some tennis courts on a strange walkway I started to wonder what weird kind of public park that was – I suddenly was at a “disc golf course”, where people tried to hit metal sticks with miniature-frisbee-like things, through parcours of trees and bushes. Walking along the borderline of “disc golf course” all of a sudden I found myself at a dead end besides a 4-lane street. The sidewalk just ended, to the left of the street there was a (non-disc) golf course, to the right there was a fence and no way of walking, except on the street which didn’t seem to be a good idea.
So I headed back and made a right out of the park as soon as possible, towards 28th street, which I knew would lead me south to – surprise – South Park, pretty much to Danny’s apartment. 28th Street, however, was a dead end again. My advice for anyone trying to get somewhere is to very carefully check if there’s a yellow sign saying “not a through street”, because basically this means that there’s a dead end and you’ll have to WALK BACK, make a right again and walk until you find a street not saying “not a through street”. This is due to the fact that 28th street is 28th street all the way from north to south and if there’s a canyon somewhere in between what happens is 28th street stops and continues after mentioned canyon. Got it? No? Google-Maps ^^.
30th street helped out and led me all the way down to Market Street, where I took a right again and made my way into downtown, stopped for some mediocre Sushi and then had a coffee in “It’s a grind”, a really good coffee house, before I continued my way back up north, on the other side of Balboa Park, from where I at least wanted to find out where the Zoo was to easily find it on the next day. I stubmled upon El Prado, a street and bridge that leads to the Park Plaza where all the museums are. This is the nice side of Balboa Park, so it made for a good part of the overall about 20km walk I should end up with.
If you feel like seeing my failure and the consequences just pop up your favourite mapping tool, find Hamilton Street north of Balboa Park and see how easy it is to get to the Zoo. Then outline the following route: Hamilton St. into Balboa Park, east of Florida Dr., walking around there, all the way down 28th St., back until there’s a crossing street that leads further east, then to 30th Street, all the way south to Market St., west on Market into Downtown until Front St., then a circle in downtown, all the way south to the Convention Center, back north to Market, east on broadway, north on 16th, west on B after finding the dead end (“Pedestrians Prohibited”), through the small streets right besides Balboa Park, finally north on 6th, east into Balboa Park on “El Prado” (Laurel Street) and back out on Park Blvd. I guess I don’t need to mention that, on the way back, when it was already dark, I took a left on University instead of a right and first walked all the way til 6th Av again before I realized my mistake, turned around and eventually made it to Hamilton again.
No rest though, because the evening was dedicated to Mardi Gras. So after watching some election-stuff and having a few beers a friend of Lilia picked us up and off we went, in a typical american pick-up-van-kind-of-car, seating 8 people, with 8 people seated and stuff to drink, including tequila in a plastic bottle. Fun fact: I had some tequilas in my life and this was, by far, not the worst. In fact it was one of my better tequila-experiences. Finally in downtown the madness started. Mardi Gras is kind of a carnival, I have no idea what exactly it is/means/whatever, just so much that it seems to be the last night before some religious special day or time.
However, it’s all about partying. The downtown-event was all sponsored by SoCo, Souther Comfort, whisky, which was a good start in my opinion. Not so convincing was the fact that all the stands sold SoCo-Fruitjuice-Iced-stuff, basically “SoCo Lime”, “SoCo Raspberry” and a whole lot more fruit variations. But all of it tasted good, at least after four beers and a good sip of plastic bottled tequila, and we all were in party-mood, so everything was fine. When Lilia seemed to get hit on by a strange guy I instinctively reacted by walking over, putting my arm around her and asking: “Hey darling, everything alright here?”. However she didn’t react at all so I assumed this was an old friend or sth and I just made an idiot of myself, so I walked off to keep up with the rest of the gang.
Both didn’t work out; The gang was somewhere in the dancing crowd and the guy wasn’t an old friend, just out of some strange reason Lilia forgot to play along and so was left with Mr. Strangeguy, which she wasn’t particularly happy about while I don’t feel guilty. She didn’t let me burn down her house anyways, so probably that was just what she deserved.
I wore a pair of my thick socks that day and didn’t think much about it, what should turn itself against me on the next morning. The new shoes are fine, just I always had the thin socks on. And those sports sock things from that day and evening didn’t really agree with the shoes as it seems, so what I ended up with was a small, painful blister on my toe and two big, painful blisters on … uhm … the back of my foot, however this is called. So I decided to postpone the Zoo to another day, since being in a Zoo with every step hurting at two spots of my foot didn’t sound quite promising.
I ended up with a lazy day at Lilia’s place, doing some photo-stuff, chatting with Julia, watching Invader Zim, that kind of stuff. At noon Lilia and a coworker came home to have lunch here and my story of the hurting blisters were another source of amusement for Lilia, who obviously enjoyed reminding me of “not to cry”. I should’ve burnt down at least some of the furniture. Just for the record I have to say that all of that was joking around and Lilia is great fun, just so you don’t get the picture of me and her trying to find stuff to humiliate and annoy each other. Well, at least not in a bad, but in a fun kind of way. Sarcasm, and such. You get the idea. Fun times.
Since I had to eat somewhen I headed out later, keeping the walking down to the way to the next bus stop. I decided to grab something to eat in a Lonely Planet recommended cafe, the “Living Room Cafe”. However even after surrounding the block it should be in twice I couldn’t find it, so I asked some local guys. Turns out it closed a couple months ago and now it’s another thing, so I had my late lunch (“linner” – lunch/dinner, just like “brunch” – breakfast/lunch) at a sushi place again and then ended up in the cafe the locals recommended, and the recommendation was good. Mug. I finished my current book, “Choke” (by Chuck Palahniuk, also author of “Fight Club”) there and had a nice finish for my relaxed day.
In the evening I was about to move on to Graham & Morgan’s place in Pacific Beach, so I checked out the public transportation and had to realise that San Diego IS a spread out city and the bus would take more than an hour, not including unpredictable waiting times and bus-being-latenesses. Fortunately Lilia’s cousin, Miguel, who turned out being a big fan of both, Invader Zim and beer, offered me a ride there, bringing the travel time down to about 15 minutes. Miguel is a psychology student, and obviously doing well since he is in a governmental supported program, getting paid for working on studies and doing the real stuff, like presenting the results on international conferences, writing papers, having assistants at the laboratory. He’s working pretty much all the time though, but that’s the price you have to pay for that governmental program he says. I admire this kind of dedication and wonder if I could do that too … usually I need a break pretty soon when I work really hard – I’m a sprinter, not a long-distance runner.
I arrived late at Graham & Morgan’s place, so the two of them headed to bed pretty early, but not before having a beer with me and chatting a bit. I wasn’t particularly tired due to my lazy day, so I crashed the couch and watched some Invader Zim episodes and thought about what to do the next day. I decided to go to SeaWorld, since, well, I AM a tourist and I’m in San Diego for about 20 days all in all, so how could I NOT do the touristy things? And SeaWorld honestly is something we don’t have anywhere near back home, so to hell with the proud pricing ($59,-) and go, go, go.
The way down to SeaWorld was a nice 15min bus ride, and since I would have had to switch once at Crystal Pier and I was still ocean-hungry I decided to walk down these couple blocks on the beach. Good idea on this sunshiny day, the weather was perfect and I walked on the fine sand, in a t-shirt and with my sunglasses, besides the awakening ocean and the first surfers heading out to catch the waves. It’s these moments to make me forget that it’s winter. After just about half an hour I was at the Crystal Pier, walked out and quickly back to be at SeaWorld early enough to enjoy all of it without hurrying around.
Now this time I really was happy to be here during the off-season. First of all I didn’t have to wait at the entrance at all. I bought my ticket, a “Fun Pass” to be precisely, which is the same price as a normal 1-day-admission, but is valid for park entrance throughout the whole year. Since no one checked my I.D. at the entrance I passed it over to Graham and hope it will bring good times at SeaWorld to some other more people throughout the year. First the park was empty. No one cared about being there early, since it wasn’t a busy time at all, plus it was during the week. I started with the arctic experience, made my way to the penguin encounter, then only saw the end of the Seal show (which is, like pretty much everything, free once you’re inside the park), walked through the underwater-tunnel at shark encounter, the fresh water aquarium, by the flamingos, petted manta rays and a dolphin, had an awful lunch experience, enjoyed the Shamu-show (killer whales), the dolphin show, saw some seaturtles, a obviously under construction tidepool and finally caught the next seal-show to see it all trough this time.
After all I have to admit that this is a great park. I spent 5 hours there and I was never bored, the walking distances between the attractions are amazingly short and the shows are really, really high quality. $59,- I don’t regret. Also SeaWorld as an organisation makes huge efforts in animal preservation, helping when there’s emergencies and so on and so forth. Anyways there’s always that little feeling that this is wrong. Killer whales are gigantic animals and how big ever their tank in SeaWorld might be there’s just no way this can be as good for them as their natural habitat. Same goes for dolphins and seals, which are cute and fun to see jumping and fooling around. It just feels somewhat awkward. But probably I’m wrong.
Additionally SeaWorld is a perfect little world. Everything follows the theme and besides the somewhat overdone “Shamu”-madness all the habitats, all the attractions, every single building and room, perfectly fits and gives a good feeling on how these animals live. Especially the “arctic exploration” is a great attraction, the whole exhibit is designed as a huge underground exploration base and when you walk around you’ll stumble upon all kinds of exploration-stuff, rooms with computers and equipment, clothes hung up to dry, special transportation boxes, an elevator, warning signs and much more. It feels a little bit like a movie-set. Plus there’s always a SeaWorld-guy around, to ensure no one annoys the animals, to answer questions, just talk about the animals or, at the interactions, explain how to do it right. Which comes in handy when touching manta rays, what in the first place feels like a bad idea, but actually is a fun thing to do. Conclusion: I advise everyone visiting San Diego to go see SeaWorld. Buy a Fun Card and pass it over to someone else. Be a good person. Send me money.
On the way back home I got off the bus at Crystal Pier again, picked up a sixpack beer, some bread & cheese at a grocery store and then made my way to Graham & Morgan’s apartment, once again on the beach. I like the beach. The evening wasn’t very spectacular, since I was tired (even more after Graham & I finished the sixpack), Graham was dedicated to an online chess-game and Morgan was at work. A small trip up to La Jolla to help Morgan into the car when she locked her keys was the big thing that evening.
Today I decided should be another beach day, since the area I’m in right now has some amazing beaches and I really want to take that opportunity. I’m not going to get to see the ocean for quite a time back home. So I walked all the way down, about 5km, from Tourmaline Surf Park to the North Jetty, to make my way on the stones out to the very end of the 500m wide Jetty, sitting there, surrounded by the ocean. A walk worth the effort. After a stop at a Cafe I walked back up and when I hit the Crystal Pier again I happened to be there just in time for the sunset, which Crystal Pier is famous for. So I waited out on the Pier and saw a gorgeous sunset (lots of pictures I took).
After the sunset there was only one thing left to do: Fatburger. Another burger chain that was recommended by Berto & Dimitri back in the days on treasure island. Now when I walked by the door earlier this day I saw a poster. It announced the “Triple King Challenge” on the 17th – everyone to finish a Triple King would get a diploma, a T-Shirt and his photo on the “Wall of Fame”. Of course this sounded like a task for me, and despite not being here on the 17th I thought that the Triple King was my task to get done.
So now, standing there and browsing the menu, I was looking for the Triple King, but couldn’t find it. There was the King Burger on the menu though, so it was an easy thing to calculate the Triple King. The menu says “King Burger (1/2 pound*)”. The asterisk says “*netto weight of meat before grilling”. Now let me travel back in time, to the stay in Pismo Beach. I tried a burger there, the regular reader might remember the “Gnarly Triple Burger”. For this guy the menu said “one whole pound of meat”. And it defeated me. Now doing the math for the Triple King leaves no option but assuming that this … uhm … thing contains no less than 1,5 pound of grounded meat. That’s almost 700g. This is the last stage before “half a pig”. This is inhuman.
What I settled with was the King Burger, just to know how filling it would be and if I might consider trying the Triple King later on my trip. And I tell you: A Fatburger Burger isn’t called Fatburger for nothing. Those burgers are really good and really juicy. Now that juice isn’t fat, but still it’s there. And I tell you after that King Burger and the fries I was full and happy. I don’t think I would’ve been able to finish a Double King, not even to think about a Triple. NO WAY. I’ll have to meditate and prepare for this.
With all those new experiences here is my new Burger Hitlist:
- Crazy Burger (San Diego)
- In & Out Burger & Fat Burger
- Jack in the Box
- Pyramid Brewery (Berkeley)
- Longboards (Pismo Beach)
- Carl Junior’s (San Francisco)
- Danny’s (Chain, but usually specialized in breakfast)
- Jacks Burgers (Santa Cruz)
- Mac Donalds (wherever)
- Strange place at the Ferry Building (San Francisco)
- Amtrak (yikes!)
Now there’s not much left. There’s Wendy’s, but I’ve seen a few posters and the meat on the photos looks … kind of like the pre-packed Amtrak-Stuff, so I’m not sure if I’m going to do this. On the other hand there’s loads of non-chain Burger Places yet to visit, so I’ll continue my research! I still have to try a HotDog at a “Wienerschnitzel”, which is an awkward looking Hot Dog chain.
Burger or not, I love you all.