Location: San Diego, California, USA

First thing this morning Garrett and I both agreed that we didn’t want to do a ton of walking today. Reasonable request, right? Being so sore from the last couple of days we figured ‘hey, it’s our last day! We can just relax!’

Guess what we did today? An astronomical, totally unreasonable, insane amount of walking. Now listen Linda, listen. I don’t want to complain about walking too much (I actually do, and I’m going to) cause it’s pretty much the heart of how I travel, but this has been basically 3 days non-stop go-go-go. A 30,000 step day is usually 1 out of every 10 days, not 3 out of 3!!

We hopped on a street car back to Little Italy to check out a breakfast place overlooking the central square that Garrett spotted yesterday. From down below all we could see was intricate brass decor and a lineup stretching all the way down the stairs and around the corner. We walked (!) around the neighbourhood for an hour, perusing shops while we waited for our table. It’s like 9 AM and my feet are already so mad at me! We finally entered Morning Glory, all brass and pink art deco. Very Great Gatsby, except that all of the servers were wearing hipster overalls, the signage included phrases like ‘This is an Acid House’ and the cheques came out on neon green pieces of cut plexiglass. In one corner of the ceiling a giant pink flower surrounded a huge blinking eyeball, watching over us à la 1984. The menu was made up of dishes like ‘Millenial Tears’ (avocado toast), soufflé pancakes, and my all time favourite food: Turkish eggs. (Throwback to Hungary when Meaghan and I ate Turkish eggs every day for a week straight). If you ever see this on a menu don’t think, just order. It’s the only reasonable course of action, I promise.

I couldn’t stop tapping my happy belly for the next hour as we made our way north to Fashion Valley open air mall for a little shopping (aka more walking!), and then west to Mission Beach. You can’t visit California and not go to the beach! We weren’t really beach ready, but that didn’t stop us from throwing our shoes aside and dipping our feet in the chilly North Pacific anyway. We walked (again with the walking) along the boardwalk over to Belmont Park specifically to ride the 100 year old wooden Giant Dipper Rollercoaster. It was totally safe and absolutely not old and rickety at all Mom, I swear! We screamed a lot and I’d say it was like 50% fun and 50% fear.

One of the last things on my wish list was to eat at a proper local seafood joint. We’d had our fancy seafood from Ironside, so now was time for the fish shack, the chophouse, the sit outside looking at the boats and get heckled by seagulls, the ‘catch of the day’ kinda place. Cheap, fresh, and absolutely stellar, Mitch’s at Fisherman’s Landing Marina fit the bill perfectly. We ate rockfish ceviche, raw tuna steak, and calamari tacos.

Little aside: A fun thing about Garrett is that he is happiest eating when the food matches the surroundings. Like I’m pretty sure he would be totally elated to eat prison food on a metal tray… if we were dining in a prison. Suffice to say that eating fresh ‘catch of the day’ on a Marina was right up his quirky little alley!

On our way back towards our end of the city we stopped into Liberty Public Market, a bustling, eclectic grouping of eateries, boutiques, and art galleries housed into an old Navy training complex. String lights crisscrossed the park at the centre of the building, and a kid (who couldn’t have been more than 10 years old) played today’s top hits on his trumpet out across the space. It was exactly the kind of place we’ve been looking for the last 2 days, but we kept being thwarted by tourist markets packed full with mass produced trinkets and kitschy ‘I heart San Diego’ T-shirts.

As much as we were enjoying the market, I really wanted to end the day in a beautiful part of town so once again we packed ourselves up and motored over to the Balboa Park Botanical Garden and Lily ponds. Tall cream coloured Spanish colonial buildings rose out of lush greenery and gardens as far as I could see. 1400 acres stretched to encompass much more than we would ever be able to walk in one evening. Though apparently we have no idea when to stop walking.

While taking photos of the lily pond, we heard, very clearly, an organ being played somewhere that just had to be in the park. Are we going to go sniff it out? Heck yes we are!! Blisters be damned!

We didn’t actually talk about going to see it, we didn’t gesture to each other, or look at a map or anything. And yet somehow we found ourselves drifting ever closer in the direction of the music. Step by step, up stairwells, past tiled fountains, through rose gardens and across immaculate green lawns, we found ourselves sat in a mass of people watching a man in coat-tails play the organ. We later found out this was the Spreckels Organ Pavilion and is the world’s largest outdoor pipe organ and has something like 5000 pipes. I don’t understand music very well, but that’s a big number! The sun went down as we listened to the organ ring out over the park, while string lights blinked on around us. We could still hear the music long after we started walking home.

This feels like the natural place for the day to end, so relaxed and beautiful and artsy… but no! Not yet! More walking needed! We had to end the day with… get ready for it…

A time travelling train.

Yes, that’s correct. Garrett has been waiting ever so patiently for 3 straight days to do an escape room, and we had booked into the Timeliner: Train Through Time at 9:30 PM. The last slot of the day! We jousted through medieval puzzles, painted with Leonardo Da Vinci, ran with Dinosaurs, and stabilized the space time continuum to save the Pyramids of Giza. With only 18 seconds to spare we escaped the room and saved the day! Woohoo! Time for bed!

STILL NOPE. Let me just preface this next part by saying I love escape rooms. Probably a lot more than the next guy. But Garrett. Here’s a man who loves LOVES escape rooms. Like, would do 5 in a day if given the option. He loves them so much so that when we finished our room at 10:30PM the employees were like ‘hey it’s late and nobody has booked the submarine room… we’ll give you a 40% discount!’

He basically threw his wallet at these people before they were even done speaking.

We navigated a submarine to an under water science facility and recovered some critical data on an eldritch god being raised down in the depths. The decor was spot on and Garrett was in his element, throwing out ideas left right and center. It’s a good thing he was so jazzed after the escape rooms because I had turned my brain on auto-pilot mode and was just about ready to lay down on the floor of the submarine and sleep.

We grabbed some Taco’s El Gordo as a midnight snack before coming home to sleep. Sleeeeeep.

I fell asleep trying to write about the day (hence the late post!), but content and happy that we really managed to make the most of a quick whirlwind trip. What a perfect weekend. Walking and all.

Until the next adventure,

Sav