My remaining days in San Diego account for 3 of the 65 days a year when San Diego is officially not sunny, but rather than let this dishearten me I´m determined to explore the down town city of San Diego and reveal all that this place has to offer come rain or shine I will discover all.
I think this might be a short entry today.
Do I hear a sigh of relief?
Forget it, this is a blog. Que Rant:
Highlights, and there are some are limited and depend on your mood, I was feeling geeky and quite optimisitc, so the Cold war Russian Submarine in the Dock at San Diego (I think) was pretty cool. The B-39 Soviet Sub demonstrated just how little investment the USSR had going spare when they built their subs, as my previous idea of what I thought cramped meant was squashed down a few more feet. This wasn´t the key attraction of the maritime museum, but compared to the Star of India (the world´s oldest active sailing ship, with not one sail intact... I smell a rat) and a bunch of steam powered ferries it actually was the few things that is actually interesting about America, the Cold War.
San Diego is a city famous for it´s Naval history, or at least it´s where the US decided to house the navy, not the same thing, and more the latter than the former. A huge naval ship is the hub for tourists interested in the US Navy, but after they got the start date of the Second World War wrong in the film of Pearl Harbour I feel reluctant to concede that the US Navy is better than the British (well at least before the impending budget cuts take hold) so humming the tune to Rule Britianna I march off to the Gas Lamp district to explore where San Diego´s brothel district used to be in full swing.
The brothels have now alas shut in favour of art galleries, dodgy American sports bars and pawn shops (I know... not the pawn I had in mind), so my tour takes all of 5 minutes. Which is handy as dinner beckons and my hostel is close by.
Keen to prove there is an underlying culture somewhere in San Diego I head off for Balboa Park and the zoo the next day. The zoo is huge, with more animals than you can shake a stick at. It is however, just a zoo. I think my photo of a bored/depressed/hungover Komodo Dragon says it all. Animals in cages. Brilliant. Determined to get the most for my $37 I power march all around the zoo, with very little to get excited about although a huge Harpy Eagle and some spooning hippos were quite interesting. But to be fair, they were only spooning.
Ejected from the park for making jokes about said spooning hippos I make it to the huge collection of museums and galleries that is Balboa Park. There are more museums than would be possible to fully enjoy in a week, but this doesn´t stop me getting bored in less than 2 hours. Not through the lack of interesting exhibitions, but more that it´s so apparently obvious that San Diego is a city that is lacking. The city has no interesting architecture or heritage to speak of, so the creation of Balboa Park seems a massive effort to import as much culture as they can into a part of the city that looks actually looks nice even if the sun is not out.
Quite a good plan, but I like to visit places that have a history or actually try and build one. San Diego has culture, it´s just not it´s own, it´s imported.
My negativism is not completly justified as there are small galleries in the city centre that demonstrate that Southern California has some budding artists and one of the galleries in the gas lamp district does actually make me want to return and buy a painting, but it´s San Diego´s geography that makes it stand out.
In the last 12 months I was reminded that there is more to life than surfing after a ski trip to France showed me just how much fun it can be (you can´t stop for a rum and hot chocolate out back at the local break). It´s for this reason that San Diego is a brilliant city, not to a visiting tourist, but as a resident. If you can brag to most cities in the world that you had to flip a coin whether or not to go surfing or skiing this morning, (but that it didn´t matter as you were doing the alternative in the afternoon anyway), I think you could feel pretty smug.
In a city that isn´t that attractive (when there´s no sun), there is always something to do. In just one day, those things can range from the piste in the morning, to a beach in the afternoon to catching a good gig or play in the evening, San Diego definitely gets my vote. In the film Anchorman, Ron Burgandy tells San Diego where to go by reading a sabotaged tele-promt. He discovers a lot of San Diegans are actually very proud of their city and I think if I lived there I´d be a bit put out too. You stay classy San Diego.
photos in the usual place:
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