Creative Kimpire: Travel Tales: San Diego, CA

Hey! I’ve been to the other side of the country since my last post! Philip had a work conference in San Diego and he flew out last weekend and then I joined him mid-week. So I drove to the airport twice, since I dropped him off, and then drove myself in the unreasonable hours of the morning to make my 7:35 am flight. They tell you to be there 2 hours early and I’m pretty sure that’s to account for all the time it takes to find a parking spot. Who are these people who get the good parking spots? I bet they leave their vehicles and pay someone to come get them just so they don’t have to move their car out of the good spot because I’ve never seen one open. Ever; and we’ve flown lots of times. Anyway, I’ve flown alone before so I wasn’t too nervous about my flights, I was however, nervous about using Uber for the first time ever, oddly enough. I know that people live in big cities and don’t own their own vehicle and commute just fine but I don’t like having to rely on someone else to drive me around, especially someone I don’t know. It was more about the fear of the unknown—will the app be easy to use, will I be able to easily locate the pickup spot, will the person make me make small talk? 😫 It was super easy to use the app, I just asked someone at the information desk where to go to be picked up (right outside, under the big sign that said “Ride Sharing Pick Up”🤦🏻‍♀️), and the driver did talk to me but it wasn’t super awkward. Actually, I was amused because he asked where I was from and I told him so we talked a little about the East Coast. He said he had been to Washington D.C. and to another memorial site, I can’t remember the name he said, and I said I thought it was near Arlington. He said it was and asked if that was in WV. I told him, no, it’s in Virginia, and he said, “Oh, it’s in regular Virginia, okay.” 😂😂😂 Yep, Regular Virginia. I live in West Virginia and Arlington is in Regular Virginia. You got it. 😉😜

The airport was only about 15 minutes from our hotel. The hotel was gigantic, 30 floors tall. Usually we skip the elevator and take the stairs but since we were on the 24th floor we decided against it for some reason 🤷🏻‍♀️. It was the Hilton Bayfront and in a fantastic location just outside of the Gaslamp Quarter. It’s the place to be in downtown San Diego: tons of shops, bars, and restaurants. We ate at a Mexican restaurant the first night, called El Chingon, and it was so good that we ate there again on Friday night. The only downside was I didn’t get I.D’d for my drink and that’s the first sign that you’re looking old 👵🏻. The majority of you were here getting all psyched up about fall and I was sipping a margarita in warm sunny weather. However, the Starbucks at our hotel (and on every street corner, I’m sure) were advertising their pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin spice scones and pumpkin spice turkey wrap. Okay, maybe not that last one. But it wouldn’t surprise me 🙄. I love fall just as much as the next girl but it doesn’t start until September 22nd, officially, but for sure, not until after Labor Day, unofficially. Catch me on Tuesday and I’ll be more likely to not scoff at your pumpkin and leaf decor (*ahem* MARSHA 😒).

The city view from our room

A Mormon church. I mean, the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I read you’re not supposed to use the term “Mormon” anymore. Idk how to refer to the people who go there..saints? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Fabulous local beer at Barley Mash

Photo cred: husband.

Fabulous food, too.

A statue of a guy smelling his armpit.

The bayside view from our room

Outside the Gaslamp Quarter, just a couple of blocks from our hotel.

We went shopping in La Jolla on Thursday after Philip finished for the day. This was the highlight of our trip because we wanted to go to Philz Coffee. I talked about this coffee a while back, how it’s only available in CA and it’s amazing so we order it, but it’s expensive so not very often. Anyway, we got to experience a barista made Tesora blend (Phil had a hot one and I had an iced mocha). It was the best coffee I’ve ever had, hands down. And the baristas were impressed that we had come from WV and were such big fans. I also got to visit Whole Foods for the first time and shop at Nordstrom Rack. It was a great day. Everyone we encountered was super friendly and their signature response to a request is, “of course!” I imagine a climate where it’s always sunny and 70-80 degrees would produce pleasant beings. Phil is trying super hard to talk me into moving there and I gotta say, it’s not out of the question. Some day. I loved it there but I couldn’t live right in a big city. Too many people for me. For both of us. Suburbs are where it’s at.

On Friday we spent the majority of the day at the San Diego Zoo. It’s one of the top ten biggest zoos in the world. My favorite animal to see was the pink flamingos. They’re just so fascinatingly strange with the way their legs bend the wrong way and their unusual color. Did you know they’re not born pink, they’re little grey fluffy things until age three and then they start to turn pink. You can see some babies in my pics. This zoo has just about every insect and animal you could think of, including goats. I’ve sort of made fun of Oglebay Zoo for having goats but I guess I can’t do that anymore. Apparently that’s a standard thing 🤷🏻‍♀️. You let yourself into the petting area with the goats and they just come and go and couldn’t care less if you pet them or not. I wanted to pet the one that had climbed up on the cable reel because I feel like that’s something I would do, if I were a goat. I’m not even sure if it was awake or not but I petted it anyway and it felt like a giant mustache. Not my favorite texture in the world but it helped calm my urge to pet every dog I saw, which was a lot. San Diego is a very dog friendly city. Another reason to love it! I missed the girls a lot while we were gone. I intentionally didn’t pack until after I had dropped them off because Sansa knows what the suitcase is for and gets all gloomy. Instead I just laid my clothes out on the dresser and then asked her if she wanted to go “bye byes.” She always wants to go “bye byes,” even though they rarely end anywhere that she wants to go 😂. She’ll go right out to the door of the Jeep and wait for you to open it so she can hop in. We didn’t get home until late yesterday evening so I picked them up this morning and they’ve been happy all day. Soph has been full of energy and Sansa can’t get enough butt scratches. I was on an organizing spree before I left so I spent most of the morning working on the trash closet in our kitchen. What was supposed to be a light cleaning and decision making effort on how to make a better recycling system, turned into a coat of primer and two coats of paint on the wall, an added shelf, and a complete rearrangement of everything in it. I had two big boxes of Milk Bones sitting on top of a cabinet that had to be moved in this process so I just sat them on the floor in the kitchen while I was working. I don’t give them to my girls anymore because they give Sansa diarrhea. Well, I went downstairs to find some tools and Philip was in the living room, preoccupied with watching a video on how to do maintenance to our hot tub. I heard him yell for me and I told him I would be up in a minute. When I came up he was laughing, telling me what Sansa had just done. While he was sitting on the couch she came in the living room with a Milk Bone in her mouth and proceeded to eat it, in front of Sophie, who looked at him with pouty eyes. He said he assumed I had already given Sophie one and she already ate it so he ignored her. He went back to his video and Sansa went back into the kitchen and came back a few seconds later with another Milk Bone. He said he was suspicious then and knew I wouldn’t have given her two big Milk Bones so after she ate it and got up to go back into the kitchen, he followed her. He saw her stick her head into the box of bones (it was closed by the flaps overlapping) and pull out another one. He laughed but took it from her and gave Sophie one, since she was obviously feeling pretty neglected. It’s funny that she would help herself to the bones because she knows they were hers but she wouldn’t dare take human food. She knows better; Sophie, not so much. Don’t trust that one. Anyway, I had to give them away so that we didn’t chance a repeat 🤣.

I don’t want to live where these are. Can you find it?

An ugly snake. I don’t like most reptiles but some of the fun was trying to find them in their little habitats. However, there were at least two venemous snakes that we couldn’t locate and I’m pretty sure they escaped. Okay, probably not really and I sincerely hope not 😳.

Leaf insects

Creepy stick bugs. Insects don’t bother me, I actually find most of them interesting. These ones are weird though.

Porcupine

Pretty, but poisonous, frogs

Baby flamingo

Sleeping flamingo. Is that a yoga pose? It should be

Flamingo doing “tree” pose.

And just more flamingos because I love them.

This bonobos was just chillaxing and playing with her ball

Hippo

This sign said the Ituri Forest (where some of the animals are from) is about the size of West Virginia.

African penguin looking guilty or pouty, I’m not sure which.

A lotus flower! ❤️

This guy is the king of napping. He was asleep sitting straight up and the crowd of people must have woke him so he yawned and then leaned his head to the side and fell back asleep. I can relate to his tiredness.

I used to think giraffes were kinda cool but now I think they’re creepy. They just stare at you, right into your soul.

Seriously.

Oh look! More flamingos 😃😜

Elephants are really smart and playful. This one knew how to manipulate a box on a string so that a treat would come out the hole. It wasn’t an accident either because she put her trunk right over the hole and did it several times 😂

“What are you looking at, huh?”

Petting a giant mustache, err goat

Not-pumpkin-spice-flavored margarita

Delicious 🤤

Sansa sitting like “people” on her ride home.