Sunday, February 18, 2024
Balboa Park is a giant park in San Diego. The zoo is in the park. There are at least a dozen museums in the park. There are gardens and trails and stages and restaurants and snack bars and even the world’s largest outdoor organ. We visited the House of Pacific Relations International Cottages. I don’t exactly know what that big title means, but there are about 25 little houses each dedicated to a different country (totally random countries, as nearly as I could tell). Inside are people from the country, with stuff from the country, giving you a treat from the country. We visited Great Britain, Peru, Iran, India, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Columbia, Mexico, Finland, lots more, and Guam. There was a kid about 10 telling his mom that Guam was part of Hawaii when we came in. His mom asked him, “Really?” He said yes and I shook my head no. I asked him if he thought they were related because they were both islands in the Pacific. He agreed. A Guam guy started asking the people what they knew about Guam and the kid started talking about Hawaii…then switched to what I’d said. I wish kids at school would listen like that. I ended up asking the Guam guy a bunch of questions. I always want to have questions, because I think people volunteering at things like this want to be helpful, but I can never think of anything. Today, I thought of things. Yay.
We went to Puerto Rico and Keith was wearing the shirt he bought there last year. The men were happy to see it – and recognized the local symbols on it. He stood by their flag (new goal of 2024 – learn some flags. Some could be two). Later in the day, I pointed out a flag with a green, white, and black stripe and a red triangle. Keith said it was Puerto Rico. Keith is apparently worse at flags than I am.
We went to an organ concert. They have them at 2pm every Sunday. I hope I would go often if I was local. The Spreckels organ is an absolute beast. It has almost 6000 pipes, the largest 32 feet long. The organist (who was realllly good) showed us that included in with the pipes were real percussion instruments – he played the xylophone, glockenspiel, chimes, and snare drum, then asked us how we thought he got them to sound like that. No one correctly guessed that if you sign up to be a member of the organ club, they put an iron ball around your ankle and put you into the organ for a week. They feed you while you learn your parts for the next week’s concert. It was very funny, but maybe you had to be there.
We went all over the park and looked at pretty buildings and flowers and shared an ice cream cone, and then shared another ice cream cone. We decided to walk the 1.7 miles back to Little Italy to have dinner at the same restaurant as last night. It was almost all downhill, so it felt like nothing to walk. The airport is very close to downtown, and we were always seeing airplanes landing so close. On our walk, one went right over our heads. I was so excited I didn’t get a picture. I took a picture of my tummy because I held the camera backwards. I’m ridiculous 🙂
