After my few days of partying and without much sleep I welcomed a couple of days doing fairly little. Yesterday afternoon I went to the Cabrillo national monument and then to the Old Town.
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed from central America and discovered California by sea in 1542, naming what is now SD as San Miguel, and he has a monument at the end of the Ocean Beach peninsula. There is also an old lighthouse there which was interesting to visit. The original 150 candlepower house is far more romantic than the modern electronic unmanned `lightbulb on a stick` house of today.
The old town state historic park district is a restored area representing the earliest settlments, redone in a very tasteful manner. I enjoyed looking round an unusally-shaped adobe house, in which not a single indoor hallway exists: every room is accessed serially from the previous room, as was apparently the fashion back then.
In the evening I went to Pacific Beach, where I am staying with my new friend Liz for a few days (she`s the one I met at the Gand Canyon). Today before work she took me on a tour of the area, we took in the views from the hills, on the coves and beaches, and gawped at the $5M houses in the fashional La Jolla. I have no idea where these people get the money to afford such an amazing beachfront property.
After Liz went to work I went to Balboa Park in search of a statue of Sylvester `Rocky` Stallone, but could not find one. Instead I went to one of the many interesting museums there, the Fleet children`s science musuem. It was a hands-on learning museum, full of cool experiments that were utterly wasted on the little brats. Several times I told various children to stop messing around (and let me play with it). My favourite toy was the pictured stereo reversing headphones, which were very disorienting.
After I hasd looked around much of the park, I walked around the Gaslamp District in Downtown SD, with a trip to the harbour. The harbour is shared with several naval installations, and the USS Midway, a huge (but tiny compared to today`s) carrier, was being prepared for the Memorial Day party.