So, day two of San Diego. We ate breakfast at the hotel and went right to the park to plan our day. Rain was forecast but we took advantage of the sun while it was out, Balboa Park has some of the most gorgeous architecture I've seen; the Spanish influence is so exotic to our eyes. These are all (expensive) museums, and although we only went to one this trip (more on that later) it was inspiring just walking around and wondering what delights were contained in such glorious buildings.
We were at the zoo at the opening bell. We took off on the Monkey Trail.
OOOOOOOHHH MONKEYS!
HIPPOS! NOT ONLY JUST A HIPPO BUT A MAMA AND A BABY SNOOZING RIGHT UP AGAINST THE GLASS!
This, my friends, made the entire trip worthwhile for me. I love me some hippos.
That furry lump is a real live panda. First time any of us ever saw a panda. They were lazy and pudgy and furry, and I can identify with them.
So we put in a couple hours at the zoo, and it started to sprinkle just as we were feeling peckish (okay, starved. The free hotel breakfast was kind of awful unless you are like my kids and can survive for three days on endless cups of yogurt).
Then the skies opened, and it poured for the next twelve hours. Like top-level-of-your-windshield-wipers-and-you-still-drive-35MPH-on-the-freeway pouring.
We were hoping that Phil's BBQ wouldn't be so crowded for an early lunch as the previous evening, where we literally saw lines of more than a hundred people in line. Sure enough, we lucked out. We walked right in and there was only a few people in line ahead of us. We ordered ribs for the grown-ups, BBQed chicken for the kids, beans for Oscar, fries for Lucy, and onion rings for Arlo (and his parents). This was the only meal we paid full price for. It was $45 and probably the best BBQ I've ever had.
Okay, the sauce was a little too sweet. I'll ask for it on the side next time and doctor it with a little hot sauce. But the sides were all amazing. We emerged sticky and happy and frankly, in need of a nap. (FWIW, about ten minutes after we arrived, a line started to form and eventually wrapped around the side of the building, so we really did have good timing.)
So we took a nap. Well, the kids "had electronics" which is Brockway/Metcalf speak for DS/iPad/iPhone while Evan and I dozed in the next room.
We got up just in time to get in the San Diego Model Train Museum back in Balboa Park. Now, Oscar had the same brief affair with trains that most small boys have, and so did Arlo. And then Arlo's affair turned into a long, lovely adoration. (It doesn't help that my dad is a train enthusiast.) So now we try to fit in some kind of train event or exhibit when we go places. So when we learned that there's a respected model train museum in Balboa Park that was just $5 per adult and free for the kids, we fit it into our schedule.
The kids were a little crabby at this point, but Arlo perked up immediately. Oscar quickly decided that he was having a great time to outdo the great time that Arlo was having. Lucy was charmed by the wee time people and the fact that all of the churches had tiny little bridal parties in front of them.
All the guys who ran the joint were just like my dad. I reckon there was plenty of retired teachers there! The one guy I spoke to at length was a retired Navy guy. The club is made up of all volunteers, mostly retired guys but also a couple geeky teens that walked around like they were the kings of the mountain, pushing carts of train parts and going into secret doors. Arlo was entranced.
Our favorite attraction was one big room with tons of looping layouts and multiple trains running. But wait! What's this?
One of the trains has a camera on it! It took us a little figuring, but we finally figured out which one it was.
And so the inevitable happened.
On the way out, all those tiny weddings proved providential. We saw two different wedding parties arriving and a Quinceanera party, which charmed the bejesus out of The Goose. I mean, sure, we saw the pretty brides, wished them well and were undoubtedly the 638th person that day to tell them that rain on a wedding day means a long and happy marriage. But the Quinceanera has a fresh-faced girl in a hot-pink wedding cake of a dress, with her court of girlfriends in short, tight dresses and brothers and cousins decked out in tuxes with hot pink vests. I felt terribly for them since their pictures wouldn't be what they dreamed of, but seriously? Lucy seeing the Quinceanera girl was like glimpsing a real princess. Magical.
We stopped at a local Whole Foods for a some teriaki and pizza takeout for dinner. (One of the nice by-products of moving to the West Coast is lots of great cheap teriaki.) We went "home" to the hotel, wrapped the hot food in towels to keep it warm, got into our bathing suits, and took the kids for a swim in the hot tub outside. It was about 55 degrees outside and dark, and there were some brave souls in the pool. We were not brave. We promised the kids we would go swimming, so we swam in the hot tub. I had planned well, so along with our bathing suits we brought our big heavy beach towels. When we stayed in Burbank earlier this year, we relied on the tiny flimsy towels provided by the hotel, and I am still cold just thinking about it. We trundled the kids upstairs and into the bathtub, washed everyone's hair, put them in PJs and had a picnic in front of the TV.
Everybody fell asleep easily that night. I finished my book and Evan passed out around 9pm.
Our last day, woke up, shoveled in more crappy yogurt, checked out (they even waived the parking fee since their computers were slow during check in!) and took off for the zoo one more time. The weather was beautiful.
Oscar and Lucy were dying to go on the Skyfari, but Arlo wanted none of it. So Evan took the adventurous kiddos on the Skyfari (and sweet Arlo waited for a good ten minutes so I could take these photos).
Arlo and I went and explored the children's zoo a little more, and availed ourselves of some of the bird activities.
Here's pictures from Oscar and Evan's cameras. They took the skyfari across the park and explored the elephant area and then took the skyfari back to meet us for Slushies. (Three days at the park and those three Slushies were the only food we bought.)
Post Slushie, we had to go find the alligators. We love Reggie at the LA Zoo, and we have made him one of our zoo friends the way Dante and Arbuckle were at the Turtleback. Arlo REALLY wanted to see the alligators every day we were at the zoo, but somehow we never got over there. So we decided to seek out the gharials, which were on the same end of the zoo.
Waa-waaaaah!
Breeding purposes! Tee-hee! We explained to the kids that the "alligator" was on a hot date and we'd see her the next time we visited the zoo. We pressed on to Galpogos turtles.
Geez, that turtle was awesome. But wait...what are those turtles doing over there?
Luckily, our kids have been watching the turtles at the Turtleback Zoo playing leapfrog for years, and they blithely moved on.
On our way out, we were distracted by one of those "shows" with trained animals and silly puns. Oscar loves him some canned puns, ever since we went to Legoland earlier this year and was chosen as the volunteer. He wasn't chosen this time, but he was rapt in front of the trained dogs, performing seals, and swooping birds. I think that Oscar is a bit of a ham, and that he might be into some theater someday.
(these are Oscar's pictures, other than the first.)
We bid farewell to the zoo (for now, we will be back!) and made a quick detour to the wee train outside the zoo in the park.
Heaven forbid we don't take a ride on the train!
Around 1pm, we loaded everyone in the car and googled a chain that we learned of from Mark Evanier's website. Souplantation is a all-you-can-eat soup/salad chain that we've heard about for years. I clipped a $10 off $30 coupon from the LA Times and mapped out one off I-5 about 40 minutes outside the zoo. And it was fine. The kids were super happy -- a little bit of semi-interesting salad (ignored), pasta, and unlimited crappy industrial Parmegian cheese. We had some slightly more interesting salad and some soup, which was a little disappointing. I guess we were hoping for The Daily Soup but we got a step below Panera, which is only a couple steps above canned soup. Blech. It's too easy to make good soup. There's no reason to make bad soup. But hey! It was cheap. And the kids were happy. It's a great option on roadtrips, where there are no In-and-Out Burgers.
We got home a couple hours later and I proceeded to do a ton of laundry. But we were full of good memories and we didn't make a mess in the house. In my back-of-the-envelope figurings, we spend about $260 over three days, $90 of which was tax-deductible. The next day we just puttered around town. So spending $260 for four days of entertainment and memories? Still expensive, but sometimes worth the splurge. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put some more stuff on Ebay.
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