Life of Wry

Didn’t expect to spend the day with Peter in San Diego. Peter had planned to attend a massive UCSD beach party and I thought I’d be heading back up to PV right after breakfast. But timing, I think, resulted in Peter missing that all important window for being in the right place at the right time with the right people and by the time we were having breakfast down in Pacific Beach, he felt like he’d missed the boat on the party.

Which meant he had a whole day to do some San Diego exploring. With me.

Very lucky me.

Started with breakfast here, at the Broken Yolk on Garnet, one of Pacific Beach’s main commercial drags:

Then decided to drive out to Coronado Island…

… and check out the famed Hotel Del Coronado..

It sits adjacent to a beautiful beach:

Peter and I ended up walking a long way along the beach walk… the sun was intense. It looks like a lot of people get married at the Hotel Del, at adjacent hotels, and on the sand.. we saw lots of wedding paraphernalia.

After an hour or two of walking around, we made our way south along Hwy 75 until it ended, just a few miles north of the Mexican border, then headed back north on I-5, toward Balboa Park to explore that a bit.

We missed the turnoff and found ourselves just north of the park and back in the Hillcrest neighborhood. I realized we were fairly close to North Park, where Grandma Celia used to live. I asked Peter if he’d indulge me as I tried to find her old place… he was game. We made our way east along University Avenue and I reckoned my way to her old apartment. I knew she lived north of University and as soon as I saw all the state names, I knew it was Ohio. I had a pretty good sense of which block the apartment was on, having visited her numerous times, and I’m willing to bet this was it:

I didn’t know that in the intervening 40 years, North Park had become one of the hippest neighborhoods of San Diego!

Here’s another one of those neighborhood landmark signs:

(Peter took this picture for me as I drove and applied his own filter… not bad!)

It was more emotional than I expected. I didn’t cry or anything, but I certainly felt sentimental–a combination of thinking fondly about Grandma Celia, seeing her old place and remembering lots of dinners there with her, reminiscing about my two years at UCSD… a time when I was the same age as Peter is now, of course, … and then PETER… starting his college career in the same place. It was just a whole bunch of crazy juxtapositions and felt surreal and insanely time warpy.

Whew. Deep breath.

Mostly… it was just so nice to be with him. Have I said that already?  That kept me feeling pretty tender the whole day.. tender in a very nice way.

Then we dropped into Balboa Park to check that out.  Balboa park is a 1200-acre urban cultural park with about a dozen museums, gardens, trails, and, of course, the Zoo, and, double of course, the Balboa Park Golf Course (where Peter, Bobby and Ray played golf earlier in the week, in the rain, I might add). It’s a very pretty setting spread over hills and canyons and contains some extraordinary architecture. I thought it was very cool. And, surprisingly, I took no pictures.

After driving around and saying things like, “wow, there’s the Air and Space Museum,” or “hey, the San Diego Museum of Art,” or “that’s that famous Botanical Building,” we decided to have a late lunch. Peter thought “a cafe” would be perfect, so searched and settled on the Crest Cafe back in Hillcrest. Here’s a shot of the side of the building and gives you an inkling that it’s going to be something fun:

The weekend brunch crowd had cleared out and besides that guy at the counter, we were the only customers so had the full attention of the waiter, who really gave us great local info and was interested in Peter’s new life in SD.. it was much fun. Here’s a shot of the interior.

And the menu:

Peter got the Mango and Brie Quesadilla and I got the Nutter Grilled Cheese:

I’d floated the idea that we go to the Padre-Giants game, but Peter said his suite mates were going to play poker that evening and he didn’t want to miss it… so we went back..

And that was that. Dropped him at the dorms and LEFT HIM BEHIND AGAIN!

Yay. Boo.