August VACATION!! (very belated wrap-up...)
I'm so behind in posting about neat life things. This is update #1 out of maybe 3 or 4 I need to make. :)
I went on VACATION!One of my best friends, K, came out to California to visit a few weeks ago and relax after a somewhat stressful job experience that didn't end as planned. We started the trip in San Diego. Relatives from Cleveland, Ohio were visiting that same week and were staying with my family down there. We had lots of fun eating grilled veggie kabobs, melting at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park (formally known as the Wild Animal Park), and splashing & relaxing on the beach in Coronado.
Even though I love the Safari Park, the beach was my favorite. My family and I had annual passes to the Zoo when I was a kid. We went to both the Zoo and the Wild Animal Park enough times that my memories of those two places are as strong visually as school or family trip memories. The jewel of the Wild Animal Park was the tram tour of their extra large enclosures. What makes the Park different from the Zoo is scale. The enclosures are signifcantly larger than that of most zoos I've been to. Animals can mingle. The tram took you around the perimeter. I remember it lasting about 55 minutes. On popular days, you had to wait sometimes an hour to get on. Luckily, the Park installed misters along many parts of the wait -- it gets HOT there in the summer.
Sometime in the last few years, the Park remolded. The tram tour my family, K and I took lasted about 30 minutes. It completely avoided parts I always loved as a kid, most prominently a huge rocky outcrop that was home to many animals who live in the mountains. When the tram stopped in front of it, the driver would always ask the audience to count the animals they could see. The point of this was to illustrate the excellent camouflage skills of mountain animals. While the rocks are still there, the animals appear gone. The tram doesn't go past there anymore.
We pretty much melted at the Safari Park. It was gross. Ice cream helped a little. :) The beach the following day was a necessity... until we realized that the sand was burning hot. Oh well!
I had fun teaching my younger cousins how to boggie board. We created a sand castle featuring a rather large moat. Our moat style was then copied by at least two other sand castle makers that afternoon. Coronado is one of my two favorite beaches in San Diego. It has a huge expanse of sand, like the beaches in Santa Monica. However, it also had a ton of seaweed this trip, something I've never seen. I'm not talking about seaweed on shore-- actually in the water, like you were wading through a kelp forest.
The day my relatives went back to Ohio, K and I drove to Rosarito, Mexico. It was my first time driving in Mexico. Also the first trip my car has been out of the country. Rosarito is an easy drive from the border, about 25 minutes. Getting into Mexico was a breeze. We were waved through the border. Had we been staying for more than a couple days, we would have stopped to get a tourist card and vehicle permit. The drive was lovely. Rosarito is right off the toll road that winds along the ocean, so we took that route. Also, it's shorter than the other freeway and in better condition. Before we got to the ocean views though, the road went up some massive hills. It was like the hill steepness in San Francisco... but it was a highway, not city streets.
We stayed in a beach resort. Our room came with dinner vouchers and a massage. The food was delicious! I posted a bunch of photos of what we ate on Instagram. When it came to food, we didn't venture much outside of the hotel. One nice find on the main street were bakeries. There were so many of them! I ate a crispy empanada with cream.
The main purpose of the trip was to relax. The resort massage helped, as did the other massage we got the next day at a small spa down the road. :D We kept the balcony door screen open at night to hear the roaring ocean. We only spent a few hours actually laying on the beach. While K was taning, I was propositioned to buy various trinkets. This happened about every 10 minutes. Not fun. Kinda killed the lazy beach mood.
Getting back to the US was alright. We almost got dreadfully lost in Tijuana after taking a wrong turn on the freeway. It the end, it all worked out. We had some moments of panic, just because when we accidentally got off the freeway, we were on city streets. Luckily, making a box fixed our problems.
Since Jeff didn't go with us on the Mexico trip, we spent Kayla's final full day with all 3 of us. We went to the California Science Center in Exposition Park, across the street from USC. We splurged on the Egypt IMAX film and the Cleopatra exhibit. I loved both! The IMAX film had narrators that remineded me of The Princess Bride: the kindly grandfather and their younger grandchild who interrupts and asks sometime silly questions. Either way, it was fun. Geographically, that area is stunning. Seeing it on a big screen, soaring above the pyramids or the Nile, is impressive.
The Cleopatra exhibit was more Natural History or Museum of Man oriented. I think the Science Center got it over other LA museums because of space. The LA Natural History Museum, also in Exposition Park, may still be building their dinosaur expansion. I don't remember seeing any proper space for special exhibits. Plus, I dunno if LA even HAS a Museum of Man like San Diego's Balboa Park. Either way, I was enthralled. The exhibit has two focal points: the historical remains recently discovered in (I think) the bay of Alexandria by this scuba diver archaeologist Franck Goddio and a re-interpreation of Cleopatra as a cunning political leader rather than an Eve-like temptress. Personally, I never realized that her time with Julius Cesar and Marc Antony didn't overlap. I always assumed, probably with some nudging from inaccurate historical portrayals of her, that she had two lovers at the same time. I was so so wrong.
The exhibit gave each patron an audio tour headstick. You held it up to your ear, pressed a button, and listened to a relaxing voice speak as Cleopatra on what you were gazing at. My favorite insight about Cleopatra was her fluency with languages. She spoke several, and was the only Ptolomeic Pharoah to speak Egyptian. The Ptolomeic's were Greek, descended from a general of Alexander the Great. They ruled over Egypt for centuries, yet never spoke the language of the people they governed.
After the Museum, Jeff, Kayla and I ate dinner in Little Tokyo. Yumm! We took Kayla to the airport the next day. It was nice to be offline for a week!
I went on VACATION!One of my best friends, K, came out to California to visit a few weeks ago and relax after a somewhat stressful job experience that didn't end as planned. We started the trip in San Diego. Relatives from Cleveland, Ohio were visiting that same week and were staying with my family down there. We had lots of fun eating grilled veggie kabobs, melting at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park (formally known as the Wild Animal Park), and splashing & relaxing on the beach in Coronado.
Even though I love the Safari Park, the beach was my favorite. My family and I had annual passes to the Zoo when I was a kid. We went to both the Zoo and the Wild Animal Park enough times that my memories of those two places are as strong visually as school or family trip memories. The jewel of the Wild Animal Park was the tram tour of their extra large enclosures. What makes the Park different from the Zoo is scale. The enclosures are signifcantly larger than that of most zoos I've been to. Animals can mingle. The tram took you around the perimeter. I remember it lasting about 55 minutes. On popular days, you had to wait sometimes an hour to get on. Luckily, the Park installed misters along many parts of the wait -- it gets HOT there in the summer.
Sometime in the last few years, the Park remolded. The tram tour my family, K and I took lasted about 30 minutes. It completely avoided parts I always loved as a kid, most prominently a huge rocky outcrop that was home to many animals who live in the mountains. When the tram stopped in front of it, the driver would always ask the audience to count the animals they could see. The point of this was to illustrate the excellent camouflage skills of mountain animals. While the rocks are still there, the animals appear gone. The tram doesn't go past there anymore.
We pretty much melted at the Safari Park. It was gross. Ice cream helped a little. :) The beach the following day was a necessity... until we realized that the sand was burning hot. Oh well!
I had fun teaching my younger cousins how to boggie board. We created a sand castle featuring a rather large moat. Our moat style was then copied by at least two other sand castle makers that afternoon. Coronado is one of my two favorite beaches in San Diego. It has a huge expanse of sand, like the beaches in Santa Monica. However, it also had a ton of seaweed this trip, something I've never seen. I'm not talking about seaweed on shore-- actually in the water, like you were wading through a kelp forest.
The day my relatives went back to Ohio, K and I drove to Rosarito, Mexico. It was my first time driving in Mexico. Also the first trip my car has been out of the country. Rosarito is an easy drive from the border, about 25 minutes. Getting into Mexico was a breeze. We were waved through the border. Had we been staying for more than a couple days, we would have stopped to get a tourist card and vehicle permit. The drive was lovely. Rosarito is right off the toll road that winds along the ocean, so we took that route. Also, it's shorter than the other freeway and in better condition. Before we got to the ocean views though, the road went up some massive hills. It was like the hill steepness in San Francisco... but it was a highway, not city streets.
We stayed in a beach resort. Our room came with dinner vouchers and a massage. The food was delicious! I posted a bunch of photos of what we ate on Instagram. When it came to food, we didn't venture much outside of the hotel. One nice find on the main street were bakeries. There were so many of them! I ate a crispy empanada with cream.
The main purpose of the trip was to relax. The resort massage helped, as did the other massage we got the next day at a small spa down the road. :D We kept the balcony door screen open at night to hear the roaring ocean. We only spent a few hours actually laying on the beach. While K was taning, I was propositioned to buy various trinkets. This happened about every 10 minutes. Not fun. Kinda killed the lazy beach mood.
Getting back to the US was alright. We almost got dreadfully lost in Tijuana after taking a wrong turn on the freeway. It the end, it all worked out. We had some moments of panic, just because when we accidentally got off the freeway, we were on city streets. Luckily, making a box fixed our problems.
Since Jeff didn't go with us on the Mexico trip, we spent Kayla's final full day with all 3 of us. We went to the California Science Center in Exposition Park, across the street from USC. We splurged on the Egypt IMAX film and the Cleopatra exhibit. I loved both! The IMAX film had narrators that remineded me of The Princess Bride: the kindly grandfather and their younger grandchild who interrupts and asks sometime silly questions. Either way, it was fun. Geographically, that area is stunning. Seeing it on a big screen, soaring above the pyramids or the Nile, is impressive.
The Cleopatra exhibit was more Natural History or Museum of Man oriented. I think the Science Center got it over other LA museums because of space. The LA Natural History Museum, also in Exposition Park, may still be building their dinosaur expansion. I don't remember seeing any proper space for special exhibits. Plus, I dunno if LA even HAS a Museum of Man like San Diego's Balboa Park. Either way, I was enthralled. The exhibit has two focal points: the historical remains recently discovered in (I think) the bay of Alexandria by this scuba diver archaeologist Franck Goddio and a re-interpreation of Cleopatra as a cunning political leader rather than an Eve-like temptress. Personally, I never realized that her time with Julius Cesar and Marc Antony didn't overlap. I always assumed, probably with some nudging from inaccurate historical portrayals of her, that she had two lovers at the same time. I was so so wrong.
The exhibit gave each patron an audio tour headstick. You held it up to your ear, pressed a button, and listened to a relaxing voice speak as Cleopatra on what you were gazing at. My favorite insight about Cleopatra was her fluency with languages. She spoke several, and was the only Ptolomeic Pharoah to speak Egyptian. The Ptolomeic's were Greek, descended from a general of Alexander the Great. They ruled over Egypt for centuries, yet never spoke the language of the people they governed.
After the Museum, Jeff, Kayla and I ate dinner in Little Tokyo. Yumm! We took Kayla to the airport the next day. It was nice to be offline for a week!