Post-Vacation Summary

So, I’m back in Brooklyn. Many things to catch up on; the desire for a vacation from vacation is also very much on the mind.

Anyway, where was I? My brief Thursday to Saturday summary wasn’t done nearly with enough justice!

Saturday:

Legoland was fun – clearly for the younger set, but we old people actually enjoyed seeing the sculptures (as FC noted in his trip there last year). My goodness – mini-NYC looked bizarre. The Legoland people did a replica of the Freedom Tower (not yet built, and using the schematic from whatever year(s) ago) – and informed us on the little boat tour that they never got around to doing a replica of World Trade Center’s Twin Towers – to me, that doesn’t mean you have to build the mini-maybe Freedom Tower. Oh well. Otherwise, the Lego versions of Las Vegas and Washington DC and everything else were pretty cool.

Off-on showers that morning/early afternoon – odd, since we kept thinking rain just doesn’t happen there.

When we made it to San Diego that afternoon, we checked into a hotel in Little Italy and had dinner at Buon Appetito, which Fodor’s describes as “this charmer serving old world-style cooking in a casual but decidedly sophisticated environment…” I went with Fodor’s recommendation and ordered a baked eggplant all’amalfitana dish as appetizer – baked eggplant topped with mozzerella in a zesty fresh tomato sauce – tasty, indeed. For entree, I had a spinach and cheese ravioli, if I recall correctly. Delicious.

San Diego’s Petco Stadium – weird architecture. People kept doing the wave at inopportune times. No wonder the Padres lost the game; the team was distracted by their fans’ silliness.

The San Diego trolley/tram thing was an interesting ride to and from the stadium.

Sunday – morning one-hour tour of the north bay harbor. Saw such sights as the USS Ronald Reagan, being cleaned up at San Diego. Scary to think that nuclear powered subs are in San Diego bay. After the boat ride, we did a drive and walked by the Hotel Del Coronado. Such a sunny and beautiful location!

We meant to do more of Balboa Park, but ended up just doing the zoo that afternoon. Pandas! So cute!

Dinner in Del Mar, at the Poseidon, with my law school classmate RF and his wife G, who are now in the west coast. Beautiful seaside sunset. Had crab cakes (never can resist those) and clam chowder, as it got windy.

Drive back to Anaheim.

Monday – Morning at Disneyland’s California Adventure, which is where you view the Pixar stuff and see Disney’s re-creation of California without visiting real California. Well, I so love Disney – it really is the Happiest Place on Earth ™. We just didn’t do enough, as far as I was concerned, since we were back on the road. We just did our run-through for the morning and then it was off to LA. Parked the car in Universal City (near Universal Studios), to take the subway. Figuring we’d make a good trip of using the subway, we headed to Union Station, did a walk through of the civic center, took the subway from Pershing Square to Hollywood. Graumann’s Chinese Theatre. Kodak Theatre. Highland and Hollywood (Mall). Cool stuff, in an artificial kind of way? Oh well. My real question is who doesn’t have a Hollywood star by now?

Then, it was back to the car in Universal City, and driving off to Santa Monica. Walked to the end of the Pier; stared into the dark abyss, where ocean and night sky met. Creepy. Had dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp at the Pier (silly me – I haven’t done Bubba Gump Shrimp at Times Sq). Then some walking in the Third Avenue Promenade. Then driving off to visit my brother’s friend, who attends one of the Claremont schools; we ambled a bit around that campus. A late night, I can tell you.

Then it was back to Anaheim, where we had to pack up for our Tuesday flight back to NYC. Well, we did a little drive around the vicinity of LAX before checking in for the flight – curiously interesting look of a bilingual neighborhood indeed.

Observation: GPS is a cool device for places you don’t know. Whether it’s for everyone is something else.

Getting back to Brooklyn and seeing how humid it was Tuesday night – eww. I thought summer was over?

Meanwhile, I missed the whole drama over what was going on at my Undergraduate Alma Mater. Oh well.

Will likely make more observations on my vacation in another post. Catching up, after all, is hard to do.