Saturday, August 9, 2014

Sunny San Diego

Next stop, San Diego! Sunny South California yaaay..

As I don't have much money to experience winter in East Coast, I decided to spend winter in warmer places such as Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California. I reached San Diego by bus from Los Angeles and it only took me 2 hours to get here. Taking bus costs me approximately $15-20, I tried Greyhound bus this time, It was pretty decent. The Greyhound bus station location in Los Angeles isn't that nice, I imagined myself in the ghetto area just like in those movies.

When we got to San Diego, we decided to buy 1 day pass for public transport, it costs $5, which includes trolley train and bus. We rode the train to get  to our hotel. Our hotel is nicely located in downtown area near Gas Lamp Quarter. I realized that I'm now a jompo traveler, I couldn't walk around without filling up my stomach hehehehe so first thing to do was finding a nice asian food for lunch, yup ended up with Thai Food for lunch :) Food was yummy! Yes we are Asian!
Lunch at Thai Resto
Chicken Satay and rice
Red Curry
When I was younger I didn't care that much about food when I was traveling, I even ate 1 time a day just to save money and survive during traveling. As I got older I just can't do that anymore, food hmmm nice food is very important during traveling, at least you spend some time in a nice restaurant, it doesn't mean expensive food, to indulge yourself. I guess I've changed, not that hardcore traveler anymore hehehhe

It was Sunday that day and the bus applied Sunday service, buses come every 30 minutes. Living in San Francisco with such a good public transport make me a little bad-tempered while waiting bus in San Diego but I tried to chill out a little bit. Roslina saw on trip advisor that Balboa Park was worth visit in San Diego. None of us was interested to visit the zoo nor sea world, then we decided to go to Balboa Park.

Balboa music hall
Museum
Spanish Village Art
Casa Del Prado
a small pond at Balboa Park
Balboa park is very relaxing place, it's very huge. There are a lot of building in old european architecture, beautiful! We walked around for a couple of hours then heading to Gas Lamp Quarter. They said that Gas Lamp Quarter is more beautiful in the evening.

There are plenty of bars and restaurants along the street. We stopped by at Starbucks as always and enjoyed some hot green tea latte :) As we lived quite near by, we walked home and we found that this city pretty safe comparing to LA, I didn't feel safe at all there.

The next day, we went to see Mission Beach, we took the trolley train then continued by bus. It took about an hour to get there. We had brunch near Mission Beach before going to the beach. The vibe remains me of Bali, Indonesia. Seeing the bike rental, surf board rental, surf school etc really reminds me of Bali.

We checked the beach, it's pretty nice and clean, we hanged out for a while, we couldn't spend much time as me and Milka had to catch up flight to Vegas in the afternoon. I wish I could spend more time, I would love to stay at Mission Beach. I will try to comeback someday. On our way to the beach, we passed San Diego Old Town, I didn't have a chance to visit them but Tari managed to go there, she said it's beautiful. I wish I had more time, two days weren't enough, lesson learned! If you guys visit San Diego, stay more than two days to be able to explore the city.

Ahhh let me just enjoy the vibe of Gas Lamp Quarter at night one more time before leaving this city and heading to Vegas :)

Happy Holiday!!

Gas Lamp Quarter at night
Gas Lamp Quarter Gate
Gas Lamp Quarter