Alan's on blog duty again tonight with Sarah's junk in red.
Today started off shaving my head with the $10 Walmart hair clippers. They're not as good as my usual ones but they did an ok job. After that we went next door for our last breakfast and had the pancakes instead of the continental breakfast. They were suspiciously similar to McDonalds hotcakes.
We left Anaheim at 11.00am and started our 90 minute drive to San Diego. As we weren't due to check into our hotel until 4.00pm, we thought we'd give the direct I-5 route a miss and take the more scenic Pacific Coast Highway instead. Driving through Huntington Beach we thought it might be nice to stop and have a play on the beach. What we encountered was surely the world's largest parking lot. Without a doubt it must have stretched for a good 3-4 miles parallel to the beach and the main road. When we eventually came to the parking lot entrance, we pulled in but when the girl at the gate asked for a $10 parking fee, we did a quick u-turn and took to the road again.
We passed through Sunset Beach, Newport Beach, Bolsa Chica Beach and Laguna Beach and they look like very nice, expensive areas with big gated communities and flashy cars. Eventually the Pacific Coast Highway ended and we found ourselves back amongst the mayhem that is the I-5. I was doing between 70-75 mph (the speed limit is 65) and everyone else was blowing past us like we weren't even moving. Even big Winnebagos were going by us.
Eventually we made it to San Diego and we found our hotel after a slight detour as Sarah had written down the wrong address. I may have written down the address incorrectly, but I pointed out the hotel the first time we drove past it. I have stayed here before. Alan chose not to believe me and to drive on for another few minutes before agreeing to turn around. The hotel is not much to look at from the outside but our room is lovely and light, very spacious and again, has free wireless internet in the room. After settling into our room we headed west toward Mission beach and a place called Belmont Park. Upon arriving we attempted to find a parking space, but every time someone pulled out of a spot, a person would magically appear from nowhere and stand in the space to reserve it. After 15 or 20 minutes of frustrating driving around the lot we finally got lucky.
We were hoping to have some lunch in one of the cafes or sports bars along the beach but they were all overflowing because San Diego were playing a football game at the time so we decided to just wander through Belmont Park and then head back to the hotel. First stop was the roller coaster, which is the main reason I wanted to go there. Built in 1925, "The Giant Dipper" wooden coaster is the 11th oldest still operating roller coaster in the world. And it feels like it too. Your head gets thrown about quite violently. The turns are extremely tight as it has to try to utilise every inch of a relatively small area. At $6 a ride, one time around was enough. At one point we heard a ruckus coming from a bar across the street and figured that San Diego must have scored a touchdown.
Heading back to our hotel we realised that we were staying in the porn district, with many adult shops (and probably hookers) within walking distance of us.
When we were here in San Diego 8 years ago we found a Pizza Hut restaurant which claimed to be the best tasting pizza in California. After tasting their pizza, we agreed. So we thought we might give it another try despite having only a very vague recollection of where to find it. After driving some 15 to 20 miles we were about to accept defeat and turn around when I saw a Krispy Kreme sign. I thought a donut might be nice and we pulled into the parking lot. Almost at once both of us had a feeling that things looked familiar and sure enough over in the corner of the shops was a little Pizza Hut. We went in and ordered a Supreme with no capsicum to which we received a puzzled look from the cashier. We realised that Americans know capsicum as green peppers and corrected our mistake. We also went next door to the supermarket to buy some ice cream, just as we had done 8 years earlier. Sad aren't we.
Back to our hotel room and I certainly enjoyed the pizza, although being not quite as good as I had remembered. The caramel flavoured ice cream is just divine, but unless you really like marzipan I wouldn't recommend buying the banana split flavour.
If anyone is having trouble viewing our photos, please let us know.
Trivia for the day: As bad as we found the Los Angeles drivers to be, they do seem to slow down and come to a stop when the traffic light turns orange as opposed to Sydney where orange generally means hit the accelerator.
More trivia. TV viewing in the USA on a Sunday night is dreadful. A station has a movie you don't want to watch, like tonight it is Spiderman. And what follows Spiderman, yes the same Spiderman movie. Other channels are the same. They follow the movie they just showed with the same movie again.
Final thought. I had to mention the fact that when we stopped to get the ice cream, Alan saw Fancy Feast cat food in the shop and they had flavours we don't get in Australia. It took all my persuasion to keep him from buying a suitcase load of cat food.
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