San Diego

Today was a travel day, after a terrific day at the San Diego Zoo yesterday.  What a great place.  It is the best zoo we’ve ever been to – including a great one in China and the awesome Sydney Zoo.  San Diego blew them both away (although Amy really liked the Sydney Zoo too).  They had a ton of animals, there were about 2 zillion people there (based on the parking lot) but it didn’t seem crowded, the place was super clean, and it seemed like every square yard was either filled with animals or was carefully landscaped with botanical gardens. 

One cool thing – it is built into hills so a lot of the exhibits have multiple levels – look at the hippos from ground level, or go down below and look through the glass to see the other hippos swimming around.  We were there for six or seven hours and there are big chunks that we didn’t even begin to see.  Only major issue – easy for a Magellan like me to get lost J  There was a small bit of left wing indoctrination, but nobody claimed that my brother is a killer whale (see Sea World post).  This was piker propaganda compared to Sea World, which was so over the top I was embarrassed for them.  Back to the zoo – it was DEFINITELY worth the exhaustion that resulted from the day.
Today, we travelled from San Diego and took a leisurely journey up to Anaheim, a stone’s throw from Disney.  We rolled through La Jolla, which lived up to its rep as a beautiful place.  We stopped and showed the kids the ocean, and almost lost a couple in the process (sometimes those waves turn out to be a little bigger than you think when they’re rolling in J).  We walked out onto the beach and the kids got to stick their feet in the ocean – though it was only about 65 degrees outside, and the water was a wee bit chilly, so it was not even tempting to jump in.  Three and Four foot breakers were coming in and they must have seemed huge to the kids, from their vantage point – not the best place to swim anyway I guess.  We started out wet to our ankles…knees, and then a biggie came in totally unexpected and we all had to change pants in the van...the kids loved it though and hopefully we get a chance to go back to the ocean before we leave.  They would love to hunt for sea shells... 

From there, it was on to Oceanside to see the not so famous birthplace of…me.  I would say that our former house now looks like a crack house, but I don’t want to actually insult any crack dealers that try to keep their place up.  The area is a valley that leads to the ocean, and the mountains on either side are beautiful still, but the valley has been paved over with strip malls and people that don’t take much care of their property.  I got a photo in front of the house, but we skeedaddled before any shots rang out (I forgot, guns are illegal in this crime-free state, so I’m sure crack dealers don’t have anything like that.  I guess they would have shot spitwads or thrown water balloons at me, which I did NOT want to stick around for either).

We went on one other historic stop on the Greg Falkowski personal history tour.  This one was awfully cool – we visited Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, which means Saint Louis King of France (same guy who got the town with the arch named after him).   He was Saint King Louis IX, to be exact, and was a Crusader King in the 13^th Century known for his care for the poor of France.  He gave up his comfort and much of his fortune, as well as his life, in trying to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims that ruled it, terrorizing and enslaving (and worse, if you were a young woman or a child) the Christian occupants and pilgrims.  The crusade failed and Louis died in the process, but he was such a well-loved, holy Frenchman that he was canonized within 25 years of his death, and the Spaniards named this place after him.  Interesting in our current day when few (I can’t think of any, can you??) Frenchmen are well-liked outside of France. 

This Spanish Mission was founded in 1798, 48 years before this territory belonged to the good old U-S-A.  It’s a beautiful mission church, wonderfully preserved.  They built a larger church on the grounds because the parish has 5,000 families – wow – and it is too small to use for Sunday Mass, but they use it for weddings and funerals.  Franciscans monks still live on the grounds, and run a retreat center and a cemetery there.  We spoke to one of the monks and some of the old folks that were there to show people around, run the museum, assist with the retreat center, and run a very impressive little gift shop. 

From there to dinner in Laguna Beach with Amy’s lifelong friend Lisa Hadley.  Laguna Beach is a much more picturesque little seaside town just inside the southern edge of Orange County.  Average net worth:  4 zillion dollars / Average working hours per day: Zilch (hence the large number of surfers and people sitting around drinking in the middle of the day – I certainly cannot blame them – this place was very cool!). 

Anyhow, it was a beautiful beach and town.  Kids enjoyed their seaside hot dogs and grilled cheese, and I enjoyed the hot fudge brownie (covered in vanilla ice cream of course), even though I was forced by a guilty conscience to share it with some little kids who thought more of my dessert than all the ocean views and Land Rovers in Laguna Beach combined.  They may have been on to something, because it was a darn good dessert. 

On to Peter, our whole reason for this trip.  He has been doing great and recovering well.  The first thing he did when he met Amy’s friend, was whip up his hat to try and show her his ear!  It will be so interesting to witness his reaction when he can see it in the mirror.  Tomorrow (Friday) all of the dressing comes off and he gets washed up (I think) which is good because he is really starting to get an itchy head!  We are excited to see it and I know Amy will get some photos, whether she can get them posted to the blog though is different story!