San Diego Part I

Life is tough at Oceanside Beach

On our first day in San Diego both Rosella and I exclaimed,"we are all wowed out"! They claim that San Diego in one of the prettiest cities in America and we both agree that whoever they are, they are right. The city is built around mountains peninsulas and bays. Everywhere you look, there is a scene worthy of taking a photo.

We had to book a motel in downtown San Diego for two days because we could only move into our condo at Oceanside on Saturday. It is located over 30 miles from downtown San Diego. On our first day at the motel, we took the Interstate highway to get there so the scenery was nice but that of a 12 lane highway. When we took the turnoff to get to our condo and found it sitting right on a beautiful stretch of sandy beach which goes on forever, just like it was shown on the internet. After that we took the ocean side roads to take us back to our motel and spent the remainder of the day exploring beach after beach after beach located between Oceanside and San Diego. The beach side houses and cottages are all spectacular, like one would vision in cottage magazines. We specially liked the rugged coastline in La Jolla. This town on the way back was as pretty as we have ever seen.

This was the view from our balcony

On our first day at the condo, by the time I got up at around 8:30, Rosella had already had her breakfast and started getting ready to go for a walk along the gorgeous beach which sits directly across our condo. While she was eating, she spotted a pod of porpoises playing around in the water directly across our balcony. She was so excited! The forecast called for a sunny 85 degree day.

By the time she was ready, I was just starting my breakfast so she left for her stroll all by herself. After I finished, I got ready to go explore the surrounding area and left the apartment A around 10:15, I headed for the pier which is about three quarters of a mile from where we live. The beach was already starting to fill up with families and surfers who were getting ready to enjoy the day of sunshine and relaxation. I took a whole bunch of pictures on my way and walked right to the end of the pier where there is an old style dinner restaurant called Ruby’s.

They have a huge project going on here at Oceanside Beach where they have set up a pipeline that is pumping dredged sand from the harbour onto the beach to refill and re-claiming more beach area. The pipeline runs directly in front of our complex where the re-claiming is already completed and runs about a mile and a half south of where we are situated. I decided to go have a look at what happens at the mouth of the pipeline. During the low tide cycle, a mixture of sand, rock and water gushes out of the end of the pipeline into a cavity that has been bulldozed on the beach and the sand accumulates in a stream that works itself back to the ocean. At high tide, they come with bulldozers and push the accumulated sand around and re-shape the cavity in the beach for the sand to accumulate during the next low tide, high tide cycle. I found that to be very interesting! We both spent the rest of the day on the beach, and spent the the next three days just relaxing and bumming around the beach.

Downtown San Diego's Gastown is an interesting place to visit

The weather on the fourth day was forecasted to be quite a lot cooler than the past few days. When we got up, it had rained and the sky was cloudy. The weather for later today called for sunny skies with cloudy periods so we decided to head for downtown San Diego and visit some of the highlights there. We started by exploring the Gaslamp district which is a well preserved district of the downtown area. Most of the buildings there date to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was a nice tour.

The world renowned Victorian style Del Coronado Hotel

After our visit of the Gaslight district, we decided to take the ferry across the bay and visit Coronado Island. Right after disembarking the ferry on the Island, we had lunch at a very fancy seafood restaurant. The crab cakes and coconut butterfly shrimp were excellent. We then took the bus to take us to the other side of the Island to the famous Hotel del Coronado with its iconic red turrets and wood structure piercing the California skyline, displaying a gracious Victorian splendour that is advertised as being one of a kind.

Situated on 28 beautiful oceanfront acres , the Del, as the locals call it, is touted as San Diego’’s only true beachfront hotel. Built in 1888, this stately classic beachfront resort has long been heralded as one of America’’s most beautiful beach getaways which was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1977. Today, it offers a unique combination of modern luxury with the charm and grace of a fairytale castle and combining that with its stunning beachfront location, it’’s easy to see why it has been called ""one of the top ten resorts in the world"" by USA Today. We explored the grounds and surroundings including the excellent boutiques located on the ground floor of the hotel complex.