A lovely Sunday in San Diego

Two years ago I received a ‘save the date’ notice from our friends Breffni and Gladys. The date was to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary at their home here in San Diego in mid-October 2017. I’ve known them for about forty of their fifty years of marriage and was convinced that nothing would stop us from attending.  I was wrong because while they were celebrating we were where we were absolutely supposed to be: with darling Megan in Florida, doing what we could to help her get healthy and strong, which is exactly what she did!

When we knew we were coming to La Jolla this time, I called Breffni to let him pick the date and location for us to take them out to celebrate a belated 50th.  Much to our surprise, he suggested that we meet them at the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park to attend the matinee for American Mariachi before heading out to dinner. It was a glorious day - or as San Diegans say, a normal day in paradise - and we rented a car to drive to Balboa Park.  We arrived early and walked around the massive park, once again mightily impressed with the beauty of this jewel. It is without question the most beautiful part of San Diego that is not on the water, and we reveled in the openness and old world beauty of the gardens, buildings and fountains. 

The play itself was absolutely delightful - as you might guess from the link above - and the Old Globe Theater itself is worth the price of admission. It is well designed to insure good lines of sight for all the seats and it is just small enough to make the production seem intimate. The acoustics are quite dynamic which is great for a play like this that has lots of wonderful music. 

We had parked rather far from the theater (we’ll blame GPS as opposed to my memory of the area), and walking back to the car at 4 pm we saw large multi-generational family outings, lots of kids and teens on bikes and scooters, and older kids with what I’m told are Smart Speakers, which are really, really loud. Unfortunately, many - no, most - of the teens were head down staring at their phones instead of the beauty of the park, but hey, they have busy lives.  It was fun to see everyone out and about and enjoying themselves and it made us miss living in San Diego, which we totally can’t afford now!

We reunited with Breffni and Gladys at an Italian restaurant in Point Loma, not far from the airport. It is a lovely spot and we had drinks in the bar and we toasted to their good fortune of having a long and strong marriage for fifty years. Soon a manager came to tell us our ‘room’ was ready. It turns out that the Barretts had reserved the private wine room for our dinner that evening. I think this link might show you the setting. It was a great evening of celebration with great wines and wonderful friends and a perfect way to end a lovely Sunday.  

Best wishes, Cindy and Wm

Challenging First Week at Casa de la Playa

Things got off to a rocky start on this vacation.  When we arrived we were told that our bed was broken and they would try to get it fixed soon, but in the meantime we were to call the front desk if we needed help getting the bed up or down. The beds in the studios here are Murphy Beds, which means that when not in use they are lifted up and out of the way into their own little compartment.  Very good space saver and for the past ten years we have had always had a good night’s sleep on them. When we arrived the one in our unit had a serious problem in that one of the cables had snapped and lifting the thing required all of our strength. Additionally, something was seriously wrong with our mattress and after two nights I relegated myself to the couch, which was marginally better for my back.

For three days, bed sales folk came in and out of our studio, measuring, probing the walls and showing the manager their slick brochures.  They finally decided on one style and on Friday it was installed while we were out. We came back and there was sawdust everywhere where they had cut moulding and drilled holes.  Additionally, the carpet had lots of wood slivers all over just begging for a bare foot. The unit they purchased has a smaller footprint and they’ll have to eventually knock out the existing frame, but for the moment it is like sleeping in a coffin, with a 2-foot recess in the frame where your head is meant to be. But wait, there’s more….

The pistons that help raise and lower the bed are right next to your head, which means that if you turn in the night, you run the risk of hitting your head, ear, eye, nose, whatever against these cold steel pistons.  What bright mind designed this??  I ended up sleeping with my feet down by the pistons, but while they did get a new Murphy Bed, they did not replace the mattress, which is still a lumpy disaster.  Of course no one works on the weekend so we are stuck with this at least until Monday. 

We tried to run the dishwasher last week only to discover that the heating element doesn’t work. Cindy patiently explained this to the manager, who sent first one handyman and then another up to see what the problem was. Between them they ran it three times only to discover that the heating element is not working!  The manager said that it cost almost as much to replace the heating element as it does to replace the whole unit.  We said we didn’t care which way he went, just get something working.  He thinks this might take several weeks.  I placed him on notice that we expect to receive full compensation for this week and if this continues, for the entire two weeks of our rather disappointing stay.  At least the weather is wonderful, so we continue to keep our spirits high.

Best wishes,  Cindy and William of Sore Back

Springtime in La Jolla

Our Delta Flight

It was a painless flight out to San Diego, mostly because I’ve come to the decision that Cindy and I shall not fly more than two hours in coach.  Our two flights on Delta in First Class were wonderful, with great service, decent food and drink and comfortable surroundings, a far cry from our usual five hours of cluttered, cramped and cruel coach. Within forty-five minutes of landing we were standing in front of our casa on the Pacific with cool breezes, a temp of 65 and bright sunshine, just what our bodies and souls needed after a particularly horrible two weeks of weather in Charles Town.

On Saturday we did a little shopping for the weekend and also a lot of walking.  Cindy wanted to order a book from the library, which we joined last year using our tax receipt for the time-share as proof of our San Diego residence. While there she found out that there was a chamber music recital scheduled for three that afternoon so she was in heaven and I was in napville.  We had what for us was an early dinner at a favorite restaurant and we were home and ready for bed by nine-thirty and sound asleep by ten. I fear that age has amplified the effects of jet-lag, as much as I would like to think I’m immune.

Great Biplanes

Perhaps MGs?

I think this is a Jag

Sunday was a grand and action-packed day. After an early run for Cindy and a walk for me, we met at a new coffeehouse downtown. Peet’s Coffee is a California standard and they make a mean espresso, so we were delighted to just sit and linger over the coffee as well as another California standard, a morning glory muffin. It was then off to the races, a quick walk to the store that carries the Sunday New York Times - which we had asked them to save for us - and back to the casa to clean up and get ready for the Air Show that was to start at 10:30.  This was part of a gala weekend event here called the Concours d’Elegance, which attracts 18,000 visitors to the small village of La Jolla. Now in its fourteenth season it is a really fancy car show with mostly high-end cars like Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, well, you get the idea. We could have gotten a VIP ticket for only $375 each, but decided to go cheap and just walked around the event, outside the temporary fences installed around the park which was filled with cars and their owners who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time buffing their beauties.

After taking photos for our friends who like cars, we positioned ourselves along the bluff overlooking the sea to afford us the best views of the planes. It was super fun with about 30 different planes, some flying in tight formation, others spewing multicolored smoke and lots of old biplanes painted in vivid colors.  They came in clumps of five our six at a time and made three passes and our positioning could not have been better.  The climax of the show was two WWII planes, a Navy Hellcat fighter/bomber and a P-38 Lightning, both in excellent condition and still able to scream across the horizon. It was really something to see and hear.

Nice Formation

We had just enough time after the airshow to walk home and get ready for lunch with our dear friends who live in La Jolla and are gracious enough to keep a box of stuff for us every time we leave, thus lightening our load for our return.  It was a grand day and the weather was more like summer than spring, which was just fine in our book.