Vacation

An awful experience which I hope never to repeat! The end.

You want to know more … well, OK.
We started the day driving north from San Diego towards Los Angeles. Margaret wanted to find Venice Beach so we worked our way through traffic and back streets, gave $$$ to a parking attendant, and arrived at a ludicrously crowded walkway along rows of cheap shops & trinket sellers, with graffiti covered unpleasant looking restrooms as a backdrop (can you tell I did not like it there?):

From Venice Beach, Margaret decided to find the “famous” bits of Los Angeles (Hollywood Boulevard, that sort of thing); this was a very bad idea!
I think we spent an hour or so driving stop-and-go along roads we did not know in places we did not know, always close but never at the places we wanted to be.
Eventually we just quit! Got on the first road that was less than cram-full of traffic and heading in the right direction. Did not last long; once we got on highway 10, we joined millions of other cars all going the same way very slowly.
It must have taken about four hours to do less than 50 miles!

In the end we reached San Bernadino, and headed up into the mountains north of Los Angeles. We decided to stay the night near Lake Arrowhead, then head down the other side of the mountain and head back towards Las Vegas … We found some nice log cabins, and Margaret lit a fire, so we could relax and unwind …

We spent the whole day at San Diego Zoo, and we did not see all of it!
The zoo is spread over a large & hilly area which makes for some very nice open cage areas for some of the bigger animals – although many still are in quite small cages (including too many birds!). Animal highlights included: Hippos (Mum & “baby”), Polar bears, Meerkats (cute anyway, but especially so because they were being fed live crickets when we saw them, and were very animated chasing their meal around!):

In the late afternoon it started raining quite heavily – so we jumped on a bus that tours around the zoo, and stayed dry while getting a lift back to the entrance:

From Carlsbad we drove south along the Pacific coast towards San Diego, first stopping for a couple of ocean pics:

We drove into La Jolla, following some nice roads winding through the town and leading up to a view point & memorial:

 

We then stopped on the beach front to have a walk around, but noticed a crowd of people – and then saw what they were looking at! Apparently it is the time of year when seals come onland to raise their pups – and a large number had chosen a small beach in La Jolla; they seemed undisturbed by all the people (who at least were keeping their distance):

Later, after a quick drive into San Diego for dinner, we returned to our “Sweetheart” room in the Cardiff Lodge – the room has heaps of character, being curved and designed with hearts everywhere, but sadly is in dire need of some repainting and other sprucing up: