Back in San Diego

Saturday, February 17, 2024

We started our day looking at sea lions in La Jolla cove. Seals and sea lions have to beach themselves for 6-8 hours each day to regulate their body temperature. I am not sure why, but they seem to have to yell about it the whole time. Onk onk onk onk!!

Keith’s friend Dave grew up in La Jolla and he had recommended a breakfast spot last night. Since we were done looking at sea lions by about 8:40, we mapped it up. It said it was a three-minute walk. Okay. Let’s go for breakfast. They had a specialty called Coast Toast and Keith had it with lemon curd and raspberries. Mmmm. I had cinnamon roll pancakes. They had a bit of cinnamon dusting them and stripes of cream cheese frosting, both of which were good, but the real star was the pancakes themselves. They were very fluffy…airy…but also crispy. Hard to explain, but delicious to eat.

We hadn’t made much of a plan beyond sea lions, but the low air tire light was on again, so I said let’s just take the car back before we get stuck somewhere. It was due at 6pm anyway. We stopped for gas and to check the tire. We were waiting for two girls to get done with the air pump. They started to drive away, then stopped and backed up. Keith was hopping out of the car before I could even say, “go help them.” I joined in on the fun. They were from NYC ad DC. They were so glad that Keith was rescuing them (I told them that he had just been fixing the bathroom in the breakfast restaurant and they looked at him like he was amazing, which is appropriate, because he is). We had a nice little chat and they were on their way. I hope their tire stays inflated.

After returning the car, we checked into our last hotel. We are right across the street from the park that is on the waterfront downtown. The wallpaper in the lobby is off the bottom 3 feet of the walls because of the flood last week. I didn’t see any other damage, but people said they had seen sandbags around other hotels. We walked a couple of blocks down the street to the USS Midway Museum, on the aircraft carrier USS Midway.

Let me be the first to tell you. Aircraft carriers are big. The Midway went into service in September of 1945 and is named after the most successful naval air battle ever. We took about 6 hours to tour through the ship, watching a movie about the battle at Midway, seeing the hangar deck, the flight deck, and below decks: quarters, food prep, mess halls, post office, sick bay, engine rooms, and more.

There could be 4500 people on board when it was full – so when it was pie day, they had to make 600 pies. Six hundred pies is sorta hard to get…like getting eaten by a bear. My favorite bit of kitchen equipment were the 80 gallon soup/sauce pots. There were 6 of them!

There were a BUNCH of aircraft on the hangar deck and the flight deck. The docents (called yellow hats, because…they have yellow hats) were terrific. We chatted up a pilot up on the fight deck who answered tons of our questions and taught us about plane recovery (landing). I was pretty overwhelmed with the whole concept of working on a ship like this and not seeing daylight for weeks at a time, but the piloting a really fast plane on and off really didn’t appeal to me. I am glad someone wants to do it.

Walking to the hotel, Keith asked what I wanted for dinner and I had an answer! Italian. I do not think I have ever said that before, but one of the places Dave had recommended was Italian and I have had it on my mind since reading that menu. Keith said that was convenient, because the area around our hotel is called Little Italy. I had Half and Half – spaghetti and ravioli and it hit the spot. Keith had lasagna and cannoli. We looked deeply into each other’s eyes (several times) because it seemed the Italian restaurant thing to do. We did not laugh too loudly after we did that.