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.
We didn't see all of Coronado, but it looked like no poor people lived there.
Now there was a flaw in my planning. I hadn't realized the trolley didn't stop at the ferry dock on its way back off the peninsula. Therefore we had to take a bus or catch a cab. True, we could have taken the trolley across the bridge, but we wanted to have the ferry experience. (Why? We live on an island and hate taking the ferry!) We would have caught one right away if the taxi driver had known where he was going. He let us off in the wrong place, so by the time we hiked over to the wharf, the ferry was just pulling away. We had a long wait in a not-too-exciting shopping area. Then it started to rain!
The Beach Village rooms are more expensive, I think, than the main hotel rooms of the Hotel del Coronado. They probably go in the $600-$1400 a night range.
