Balboa Park

Wednesday September 30, 2009

We spent the remainer of the afternoon walking around this section of the park. I loved beautiful Balboa Park and would return to San Diego for it alone.

A little background from the net:

The largest cultural complex west of the Mississippi, San Diego's Balboa Park is sometimes called the "Smithsonian of the West" for the concentration of cultural institutions within its boundaries. Originally built for temporary use during the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, the buildings here are beautiful enough to be considered attractions in themselves, but the real draw is the culture, history, science and arts held within their walls. Among its attractions are eight gardens, 15 museums, a Tony Award-winning theatre and the San Diego Zoo.

It would take days to properly cover the Air & Space Museum, automotive museum and other museums. The youth ballet and symphony are here, plus an organ pavilion, a carousel and botanical building. Among other things, I would have liked to have seen the Ansel Adams photographs.

My favourite building, although I'm not sure if the design is used in more than one building.

San Diego Model Railroad Museum

Wednesday September 30, 2009

After lunch, we rushed over to the Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park. When we went to pay the $5 or $6 fee, the man at the ticket booth said, "I'm sorry but I can only charge you a dollar. We close in half an hour." Down a steep flight of stairs we went to the museum, past a full scale authentic signal stand.

It would take hours to enjoy the hundreds of feet of scenery throughout the many rooms.

There are awesome trestles...

a detailed train station...

a crowded train store...

and antique train models.

We were astounded to come across remnants of one of the world's most famous model railroad layouts, the "Gorre and Daphetid Railroad," which was lost in a fire just a week or so after the builder, John Allen, passed away.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - not exactly Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

The Prado at Balboa Park

Wednesday September 30, 2009

Mid afternoon and we were hungry. When we took the trolley to this park the day before, it looked like the restaurant and surrounding buildings would be easy to find, but after leaving the zoo on foot we got lost in fields and parking lots. We came to an area called the Spanish Village Art Center where a glass show and sale was going on, and eventually stumbled upon The Prado restaurant. This restaurant seems quite popular so I wanted to try it.

We could have eaten inside...

...but we chose to eat outside, California style.

It was hot so we had a big glass of lemonade and shared this cashew chicken dish "stir fried with red bell peppers, yellow onion & toasted cashew nuts on steamed jasmine rice". It was good but we were too rushed to really enjoy it. We had to race off to the model train museum before it closed. In our haste I forgot about the Tres Leches cake "traditional 'three milk' soaked sponge cake, baked meringue filled with caramel bananas, vanilla bean ice cream" which someone had recommended.

A trolley tour

Tuesday September 29, 2009

We couldn't do the Old Town Trolley Tour with luggage and there doesn't seem to be anywhere handy at the dock to store it. Glenn got the brilliant idea to try the train station just a couple of blocks away. We hoped they would accept our bags as we would be travelling with them a few days later. They would, for $3 a bag but they took both our bags for that price. By this time it felt like 80° F so we took a kabuki cab.

The train station is quite an attractive building and I meant to take a picture of it later but forgot. You can see a picture of it here. The sign says Santa Fe just to make things a little confusing.

Time marched on and we missed a trolley by seconds. This is down by the cruise ship dock and since there are many tour operators in this spot there are also lots of tourists, kind of like at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf only not nearly as tacky.

This picture of a trolley was taken on Coronado. They run about every half hour and make 11 stops. One can jump on off and on at any stop or take the whole tour which takes about 2 hours, I think. At about $30 a ticket it seems expensive but the tours are great fun. The drivers are full of interesting information and they put on recordings in timely spots throughout the tour. For instance, an Arnold Swarchenegger voice made the safety announcement. Our first driver guide had a funny way of talking that made me think of Gilligan's Island. If you keep your receipt, you can ride the trolley on another day for only $18 ea.

This building's claim to fame was that it was where the bar scene in Top Gun was filmed.

Views of downtown San Diego.

You hear a lot about the Gaslamp Quarter, but it didn't particularly fascinate me. Just as well since we couldn't fit everything into four days.

There was a stop and a small mall at the waterfront. We drove by a large industrial yard where bananas are brought in. I believe they said most of the bananas in the country come through here.

Hold onto your hats! The trolley sounds like a tank as it blasts over the Coronado Bridge and it seems out of place with the rest of the traffic. Jaunty music is played during this madcap ride. Somebody mentioned that San Diego can have a curved bridge because it doesn't freeze or snow there, which is something that hadn't occurred to me.

We get a glimpse of the Hotel Del Coronado and the beautiful beach there. More on this later because we'll be back in a few days. The trolley makes two stops on this island which isn't really an island, then it's back across the bridge.

Wonderful Balboa Park. I love this place and could spend days here. We'll be coming back tomorrow on zoo day.

On we go through Little Italy. There were lots of banners of people including one of Frank Sinatra. Don't know who this tennis player is.

The farthest point out is Old Town. This touristy spot looks like a town out of the old west with a Mexican influence. I'd hoped to get back here but it didn't work out.

Even though this end of the city is closer to La Jolla, we had to take the trolley back to the cruise ship area to retrieve our luggage from the train station.

At home I had looked into booking a shuttle to La Jolla, but $60 didn't seem very cheap. People had advised to rent a car, saying that taxis are very expensive, but I didn't want to start my holiday driving in downtown San Diego. We decided to take our chances with a cab. $38.