CA Days 39-43: San Diego, the last days

Not in the mood for reading? Here be pictures.

I messaged back and forth with another host for the weekend, but wasn’t lucky and therefore kind of homeless once again. It really wasn’t bad, in the meanwhile I’m used to something going wrong and there’s always a hostel around, so no big deal. Graham & Morgan immediately offered me to stay another night at their place and I gladly accepted – not only because I therefore had to worry bout one night less, but furthermore because I love the area up in Pacific Beach and hanging out there longer didn’t sound like a bad idea at all.

Back home we headed out to pick up Morgan, she locked her keys in the car and really scared Graham when she called and said “I just made a huge mistake!”, to what he replied nervous “did you just wreck your car?”. Fortunately nothing happened and it took nothing more than a short ride up to La Jolla with the extra key. Since I had nothing better to do anyways I joined in and Graham gave me a short tour around La Jolla downtown, which is the high-end-upper-class area of San Diego. The high number of limousines and bouncers in suits in front of night clubs confirmed that. Back home we talked a bit, but didn’t do much since we all were tired from stuff we did the whole day and decided it wouldn’t be the worst of ideas to catch up with some sleep.

There wasn’t really much left to see within the reaches of walking & public transportation, so I decided to dedicate the upcoming day to Old Town and Ocean Beach. The first being the historical part of town where it all started, now turned into a national park and being more or less a huge composition of tourist gift shops and kitschy tourist-things, like a dance-show in old spanish clothes in the old-fashioned spanish restaurant and shops stuffed with cheap clothing-imitations from back in the old days, all of them gratefully accepting Visa & Mastercard.

Despite all the merchandise the park itself doesn’t feel like forcing someone to buy stuff. The shops are there, basically every other building is a shop, inbetween them alway one building being a “museum” of a very rudimentary kind, some of them literally one decorated room, but as you walk out the door you see a lot of authentic stuff, so it is nice. My conclusion is: It’s nice to see, especially if you pass through/by anyways (what is very likely), it’s doable in an hour and it’s free, so why not even walk around a bit on a sunshiny day?

After Old Town my destination was Ocean Beach, and on the way back to the bus stop a man walked over to me and asked if I could spare a buck for a bus ticket. At first I wasn’t at all surprised and already picking one of my usual excuses – “no cash” being one well-working in the land of credit cards, but then I had a second look at the guy. He was well-dressed, obviously hygienic and not smelly at all. So I looked at him and he understood, starting to explain. “I just ran out of gas and have no money on me. If you could give me $5 for a gallon of gas I’d give you a free service for your car”. This was when he was about to give me one of his business cards. “Don’t worry bout it”, I replied, “I’m just a tourist and don’t even have a car around here” and, with a smile, handed him a 5$ bill.

He was simply astonished. “Oh, thank you! And … uhm, you don’t have a car? I mean, I could give you a check and …” – “Never mind, I’m really just a tourist” – “Okay, well, thank you! Most people wouldn’t help, thanks!”. I will never see this guy again, but I know he’ll never forget me. It’s a good feeling to surprise a stranger on one hand, and sad that in this world people are astonished when they get help on the other hand. However, next destination, on to the 35 bus heading to Ocean Beach.

Now Ocean Beach is not only just another label for a piece of coastline on the map, it’s the hippy-part of town, full of esoteric shops, Tarot- and other future- or mind-readers, VW-busses that aren’t pimped up but pimped short, tattoo-studios and all the likes. Also Ocean Beach claims to have the longest pier and since the ocean is what I crave the pier is where I want to be, as near to the ocean as possible, without getting wet. The pier actually is T-shaped, a long walk out and then you can either go left or right a couple meters, where most people fish or just watch the boats, might even are looking to spot a whale with their binoculars.

Almost at the end of the pier there’s a little restaurant, which I was convinced would be high price & low quality, due it’s the one place out on the pier and hey, where else would you want to have a snack? Little did I know. The menu had some good looking things for some reasonable looking prices and, much to everyone’s surprise, I decided to go with the cheese burger. “Can I have bacon on that?” – “Sure”. Not only was this a seat-yourself place, but furthermore it was table-serviced, so no standing in line and picking up your food like at many, many other places, but actual sitting at the table, glaring out to the ocean & the beach and relaxing with a coffee until the burger would be ready for the feast.

To my extended surprise the burger not only was okay, it was, in fact, the best one I had so far, plus was this a huge burger my friends. Only the fries were not so much the way I like em, they were thick and not at all crispy, however I had troubles eating them anyways after that delicious chunk of meat, pickles, cheese, bacon and onions with a good amount of ketchup & mustard I just had managed to stuff into my stomach. “Some more coffee?” – free refills. Salvation.

The plan for the evening was to go to an art-event called “Ray at night” which is located at Ray Street in North Park and all about local artists showing their work in some small galleries, having a glass of wine or a beer and enjoying some music. Graham would join me for it and we would meet up with Danny and some more couchsurfers, to hang out and have a good time. So I headed back to Graham & Morgan’s place and after some eating on Graham’s and some packing-stuff on my side we got into the car and off we went, heading to A/28th to drop my luggage off at Danny’s place, he who would have me staying for yet another night after I already stressed their hospitality for no less than a week.

Since Graham had to drive home early anyways and I wanted to assure that Danny would have a beer or two with me we just drove up to North Park with Graham and would take a cab home, or just walk. Arriving at Ray at Night soon uncovered that this event wasn’t very … spectacular. We met up with Lilia whom i stayed with before & Carissa in a cafe and then just browsed around the galleries in Ray Street. The first gallery was covered with paintings of fruit. Actually, it was covered with paintings of the same fruit: A lemon, a lime, an orange, an apple. In various alignments, various order. Sometimes one was missing, sometimes they were beneath and sometimes over and under each other. We decided to grab one of the free beers in the back yard and wait in front of the gallery until the rest of the gang is done, to decide what else to do.

The rest was kind of really motivated to check out the different exhibitions, or they knew something they didn’t tell us, however Danny & I decided it was about time to get out of the art-thing and into a bar. Graham wouldn’t join, and I really can understand his explanation: “If I go to a bar I get drunk, and since I’ll have to drive home I’ll just browse around a bit more and then head off. You guys don’t worry, I’m fine.” Fair enough. And in we walked into “Scolaris Office”. And two guinness and two jameson on the rocks, with one icecube, we ordered. And then we decided to play some pool.

Funny enough I didn’t suck this time. Either the jameson/guinness combination helped, I improved or I was just lucky – the latter being the most convincing option -, but anyways I won the first game quite fair and the second one because Danny potted the 8 by accident. Lilia & Carissa showed up shortly, but headed on to get some art from a friend of Lilia they wanted to show to some of the gallery owners, or something like that. Caley dropped by on her way home for a short talk and since we just finished our round of irish dinner she offered to drop us off at a bar near their place, so our walk but only be a short one.

On Danny’s advice this bar had to be the Turf Club, where we continued with our usual business: Another round of irish dinner. The menu read well – this place was all about meat and steaks and barbecue, but I’m on a mission, so what I ordered was the burger. Now what I didn’t know about the Turf Club is the fact that you can order whatever you want for cheap, but in return what you do is you take the raw meat they served you and throw it on the big grill in the middle of the room, taking care of the food-preparation yourself. While in general I think this is a funny and good thing to do it’s a different thing to do it during your second round of irish dinner. But this wasn’t about no delicious food anyways, it was about the Turf Club experience as Danny explained, and my slightly-too-english burger and his plain raw steak ended up going down really easy accompanied by a sip of jameson.

Monday Caley wanted to go to the farmer’s market in hillcrest to pick up some brunch before she would have to be at a park with murals for a class. It was a hot sunshiny day, so why not even join? So that’s what we did. Off to the farmer’s market, where there were some funny people and therefore some funny people-watching, good fresh fruit juices, but not-so-convincing food, at least not convincing me. The park Caley’s class was in isn’t quite in the best part of San Diego, but still a nice place in itself. There are huge murals all over the bridge’s pillars, on walls and staircases and all in all the whole thing had an interesting atmosphere. Danny and I went crazy on making artsy pictures of a rose we found in a fountain and left Caley with her class, which we thought would be appreciated, but somehow turned out to make Caley a little mad. Being the guest all that madness got channelled towards Danny, which was kind of weird for me, but still better than being blamed. And hey, relationships are based on little fights, so why not even lean back and enjoy the show? In the next little relationship-fight who happens to occur around me it might already be myself to argue again.

Caley’s next stop would be the Chinese Historical Museum, downtown, and since she herself said that this might be a little boring Danny and I headed out to find some sushi for my hungry stomach. Much to my disgrace we found four sushi-places, all being closed and only would open around 5pm again. It was just about 3.30pm, so no way of waiting. There were plenty of other restaurants, but hell, it was a 30° sunshine and stuff day, I couldn’t even think of eating something warm. So I would just wait and skip lunch, we didn’t do much of activities anyways so I wasn’t in the urgent need of nutrition.

The museum stop didn’t take all too long, so Caley picked us up and we drove back to their place, relaxed on the couch, browsed through some of my Vegas-pictures, talked and that kind of thing. I then got my stuff together and we finally would go out for sushi, to the Sushi Deli in Hillcrest, a place heavily recommended for their extremely low prices. And despite we had to wait for about half an hour to eventually get seated I’d without a doubt recommend this place. We ended up paying 10$ per person, including tip, and all of us were stuffed to the top with sushi of definitely good quality, and in this mode Caley & Danny gave me a ride all the way to the SDSU, to El Cajon Blvd / Art Street to be precisely, to the home of Nick, where I would stay for the upcoming two nights.

Evening one at Nick’s was an easy relaxed one. First I hung out with Dan, one of Nick’s three roomates. We watched some TV and just did the usual hello-couchsurfer-talking. Where are you from, how long are you travelling, where did you start, what did you see, how did you like XY and the likes. Since those guys were partying hard for the last four nights straight they weren’t up for much of an exciting night and everyone went to bed kind-of early, which I took as an opportunity to upload and label some pictures and prepare myself for my visit at the zoo.

Nick had a class at 10am that would take until 11am. He offered a ride to the zoo, and since it would take me at least an hour by bus I gladly accepted. I would only loose about 20mins and it was clear from the start that I couldn’t do the whole zoo in one day, so why worry about a couple minutes. The time Nick was at class came in handy to research the admission rates and special offers, revealing the perfect-fit 2-day admission for 40$, which is – compared to the 35$ one day admission – kind of a good deal I’d say. And even if I would decide not to use the 2nd day I could always pass the ticket to some other couchsurfer in the area who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it, you know, living the hospitality spirit and stuff.

Now the San Diego Zoo is definitely one place no one should miss. While SeaWorld was great and entertaining and worth the admission and kept me busy for a whole day, the zoo topped that up. First of all it’s not like you would expect a zoo to be. It feels more like a Safari from the beginning, because you walk on small paths through dense woods of all kinds of exotic plants. I think it was “more than 4000″ what the tourguide said, however without going to much into the details the whole zoo just feels like one living thing, a big jungle changing with every step.

Also the exhibits are done in a great way. They aren’t anything about “showing as much of the animals as possible”, but they try hard to resemble the animals’ natural habitats, sometimes resulting in them hiding, what I by far prefer over blank cages where I can see the animal in it’s whole pity of being used as a product. Included with the 2-day-ticket are unlimited rides on the guided tour bus, which isn’t very spectacular and only recommended if there’s some time left after you think you’ve seen everything, unlimited rides on the express-bus, which takes people all around the zoo, and the skyride (or however it is called), taking the visitor from one end of the zoo to the other. The aerial ride is pretty funny, the express bus I never used because there’s always something to see on the way.

I got hungry in the early afternoon and already feared a SeaWorld-like experience when I walked up to the counter of the restaurant just by the entrance, but was positive surprised by the “Chili in a sourdough bread bowl” for 6$, which made for a good meal for a fair price. Since I knew that my camera’s memory card wasn’t excessively large I borrowed a 2gb card from Nick to ensure detailed documentation, not at last because I thought this might be of special interest for Julia. Foolish me didn’t think of freshly charging the battery though, so I ran out of power instead of memory. Damnit.

Just a busride later, back at Nick’s place, he and his girlfriend Stef headed out to buy some dinner-cooking-supplies and booze, to later return with a 20-pack of Blue Moon, a belgian beer I already knew from the stay at Sonya’s in Berkeley, a bottle of Vodka which didn’t amaze me all too much and a lot of chicken, the plan for dinner being “parmesan chicken”, basically chicken baked with a tomato-sauce, covered with melted parmesan, with toasted white garlic-bread and pasta on the side. The portions turned out huge, but I was hungry from a busy day and two Blue Moon’s, so it went down just so smoothly. While talking with the gang around it turned out that it was a holiday today, what explained why the zoo was so full on a weekday, just none of the guys recognized it because schools don’t care about no holidays.

Steve, another of Nick’s roommates, started to mix SoCo-Coke, which is whiskey, which is what I like, so I couldn’t do any different than politely asking to join the whiskey-joy. And that was how the evening went on. SoCo-Coke & TV, later SoCo-Shots and TV, and the next thing I remember being me waking up sitting on the couch, in the middle of the night, everyone else obviously in bed already. I changed into my pyjama, sneaked into my sleeping bag and continued with the joyful pleasure that is, sleeping.

There still was some more zoo to see, but the next day I didn’t feel like big activities, for whatever reasons that was. Luckily Nick just had his morning class and no one felt like doing much for it was yet another bright & sunshiny summerday, so when Nick got back from class we headed out for some brunch, picked up Stef from school and then they showed me Point Loma, which is a sailing-harbour and a gem of a place. Then for some more relaxation back home and there it was again, time to say goodbye. Off to Amanda’s place, a couple miles down El Cajon Blvd into 30th street, where Dan gave me a ride to. I wish I would’ve stayed with those guys for some more time, since all of them are great to hang out with, we had some good fun and would’ve had some more of it, that for sure. Maybe another day, when I return with company, to get crazy some more.

Amanda was watching LOST when I arrived, she’s just been infected by her best friend Danielle, who gave her the first season, carefully arranged on 6 DVD’s. So we talked, drank some red wine and watched LOST. Amanda and Danielle were travelling through europe just recently and so there was plenty to chat about, including Amanda showing me what I claim to be the most obscure wine ever produced, due to having a huge portrait of Adolf Hitler on the label, under which it says “FÜHRER”. It’s from Italy. Who, for god’s sake, thinks of that? And who, damnit, sells that? We life in a weird world, that for sure.

Later Danielle came over. I asked Amanda where I can grab some dinner around here and she just advised Danielle to bring some food, which then resulted in Danielle cooking some pasta with tofu, mushrooms, dried tomatoes and some more stuff, which was delicious and once again I ate and ate and finished it to the last piece. I get into my hungry phase, a rare thing to happen, but if it does then I start to eat like a pig; Until nothing’s left. We’ll see how long that lasts. Danielle then headed home again, Amanda & I spending the evening watching some more LOST and drinking some more wine.

Later in the night a friend of Danielle came by, he was travelling in the area and Amanda offered him to crash by here for the night, obviously both of them having a specific idea of what that “staying for the night” meant; When he arrived he said hi, then he and Amanda got to Amanda’s bed instantly and so I headed to my little shelter. Talking shelter, when I arrived Amanda said I could either sleep on the couch in the living room, or in the extra room. Since a little separation isn’t all that bad I decided for the extra room, which turned out to be a small house back in the garden, one room, with a comfy mattress, power supply and windows. Kind of like a very small apartment, anyway really funny to stay in.

Since I am about to leave tomorrow today was definitely dedicated to the zoo again, so after I got up and had some noodles for breakfast I got on the bus and headed out to see more of my animal friends. The weather didn’t want to be that nice today, it was a little chilly, cloudy, not much of bright sunshine, which wasn’t a problem temperature-wise since I’m always equipped with my softshell-jacket, but kind of made the whole photograph-thing more difficult. My camera still is a snapshot-cam and already has it’s troubles when things are further away or move, not to talk about moving things further away without direct sunlight. Well, it didn’t harm my experience, just the parts others can see on the resulting photos, so what I do is I pity the viewer and move on. Haha.

On the way back home something strange happened, something I’d never thought would be possible after my previous experiences with that matter, but I felt the deep need for some mexican food. Much to my luck there’s a place for exactly that just around the corner of Amanda’s place, which actually is Amanda’s and Chris’ place, Chris being Amanda’s roommate, who is a barkeeper, but somehow I haven’t met him yet, he’s out all day and obviously long into the night. However, when I got back today Amanda was watching LOST, so I joined in, we browsed through the new zoo-pictures and talked. The LOST-DVD got stuck every once in a while, which annoyed Amanda as far as she decided to watch something else, something being my choice and ended up being School of Rock, which I wanted to see really bad.

Amanda didn’t like it that much, so she used the time to take a shower while I enjoyed Jack Black doing his goofy things. After her shower, at about 8pm, Amanda came back to the livingroom and said “I’ll go to sleep now.” – “What? Are you serious?!” – “Yes, sorry, I am SO tired. I haven’t had much sleep last night”. I grinned, knowingly. She grinned, embarrassed. Since she’ll not have to work tomorrow before noon we’ll have some more time to hang out tomorrow and I could catch up with my photos and my blog, to keep everyone back home up to date.

So it’s only 9 more days in the States, the trip almost being over, L.A. still to do. I was really happy that my bank account was in such good shape when I checked it shortly before I left, however it turned out that a wrong transaction happened to end up there, so when I’m back home I’ll practically be broke. Actually, I’ll be in debt, but there’s STILL the money for my civil service I should already have since SEPTEMBER and as soon as I’m home I’ll threat those damn guys with doom & hell & pain & the Wisk000cil. It’s amazing how governmental institutions manage their customers, their voters. Assholes.

But you don’t worry, for I love you all.