What a Wonderful Weekend

Wonderfully, we went westward where we welcomed warm weather without wandering waifs.

I was just feeling randomly alliterative.  At any rate, we went to San Diego for the weekend sans children.

Friday we went to Seaport Village, which is a collection of shops on the shoreline that are ridiculously overpriced but very fun to go to.  They have a couple of art galleries, and one of them had the artist painting while we watched.  I particularly liked the paintings there by Walfrido Garcia, but it was neat to get to watch an artist painting.  He was really nice and introduced himself to everyone and stopped to answer questions.   I liked his style, but he does a lot of paintings of buildings, and I prefer landscapes.

Anyway, after the Village, we went to Coronado Beach, which is located on an "island" in the center of the bay. I say "island" because there's a road out to it that they keep build up (and it's not a bridge), so technically it's a peninsula.  With a very skinny isthmus.  The cool part was that on the north side of the island is the Coronado Naval Air Station, and the flight path lines up right over the beach.  It was like going to an air show.  Very cool.

Our hotel was the Sheraton, and it had a really nice pool.  It had lots of other nice things, too, like tennis courts, a gym, and probably lots of other stuff, but we only used the pool.  Also, it was technically a marina, so it did have a walking path right on the edge of the bay where you could rent boats or sign up for a whale-watching tour.

Saturday we went to Balboa park, which is where the San Diego Zoo is.  We did not go to the zoo.  Instead, we went to the Fleet Science Center, which has tons of hands-on science exhibits.  It was one of those places that you go on a field trip, but it was really fun going as an adult, too.  Pea would have enjoyed it, and I couldn't help thinking about that as we were there, but the twinge was only momentary.  Fleeting, as it were.

The best part was the Hubble IMAX show.  Ostensibly, the show was about repairing the Hubble telescope, but it was really an excuse to watch AWESOME images of space on a GIANT screen.  This here is the Orion Nebula, which the Hubble took.  The movie took us inside the cloud, navigating around it and viewing deep inside.

Then, we lazed around the park, going through the gardens and exhibits, watching street musicians and various other entertainers.  We passed three Tarot card readers, one of whom was a very non-mysterious-looking guy, which in and of itself was very mysterious.

Saturday was rather uneventful, but I will say driving in San Diego is  miserable.  The roads go up and down hills, turn suddenly into one-way streets, and are an all-around pain to navigate.  We tried to go to a nearby stake center for the Priesthood session of Conference, but rather than being 5 minutes late, we drove around in circles and were half an hour late.  Oh, well.  It's not like anyone there knew who we were or is ever going to see us again.

We made it home by 1am.  Sunday we went to Grandma's farm to watch the rest of Conference on the TV.  Pea and Strawberry were very good and neither wanted to come home.  Due to a babysitting glitch, Pea is staying with Grandma for the rest of the week.  Strawberry was very upset that she had to go home but Pea got to stay.  She did seem to enjoy the one-on-one attention yesterday, though.