6.4.2012 – 6.4.2012  21 °C

D got us going early this morning as we were leaving the glitz of LA and heading south to check out San Diego. (For those who aren’t aware of the travel plans we are not spending time in either LA or San Fran as we’ve done this stretch of California in a previous trip to the US)

The drive from LA to San Diego is a typical drive along a motorway.. lots of cars and concrete walls! Not overly scenic.. The thing I really noticed is that a lot of the drive takes you thru the outer suburbs (i think) of LA and this part of the city is what I would describe as a Lego city! Big blocks of buildings with neat streets intersecting and neatly planted palm trees… very same/ same as you drive along! I think the makers of Lego City came to this part of the world as their inspiration! 🙂

San Diego itself is quite a hilly city (although so too are parts of LA).. we drove straight to the zoo as we had planned to check out this world famous institution. I’ll set down at this point that I’m not actually a huge fan of zoos as they seem to typically be large animals stuck in fairly small concrete enclosures with annoying children tapping at glass saying things like “move [insert animal name]”. San Diego isn’t that dissimilar but they are probably a cut above most zoos in the world. Most of the enclosures have plenty of greenery around the enclosures as well as inside for the animals to play with!

San Diego is home to most of the main types of animals in the world. We saw elephants, giraffes, rhinos, bears, tigers, lions, monkeys, apes and all of the Aussie favourites. The introduction to the parkland is on board a bus that has accompaning commentary (which of course we caught almost at the end of the day!). Being Good Friday today, the crowds were pretty full on (although it doesn’t appear to be a public holiday here in the US today?) but it was a really enjoyable day checking out the animals in their purpose built habitats.

After an exhausting and sunny day we headed into town to find our hostel and to have some dinner. Our hostel is in the old part of San Diego (Gas lamp district), which is filled with restaraunts and bars and seems like a lovely part of the city. We had some happy hour drinks and nibblies for dinner before I headed in for a shower and some much needed panadol whilst M&D went for a wander thru the Old Town.

Back to LA tomorrow for our flight to Seattle- we plan to spend most of tomorrow morning seeing some more of the sites of San Diego before we drive back late in the arvo!

Song of the Day= Elton John, Crocodile Rock