Day 200 - July 19

After visiting the Wild Animal Park on Saturday, today we hit up the famous Zoo.  It was a perfectly lovely zoo, if you like zoos, but it was nowhere near as awesome as the Wild Animal Park.  I liked the giant herds meandering around at the Park instead of caged, pacing animals at the zoo like all other zoos.  Since the pandas are so famous here, I anticipated them having a great exhibit and enclosure.  I think the DC zoo pandas have a better place though!  I did like the polar bear's home.  Most of the animals were lazy again today because, well, many wild animals hunt at night or at dawn.  Some zoo out there should jump on that fact and have nocturnal hours!

After the zoo, we visited the USS Midway which is the aircraft carrier museum docked in the bay.  Many parts of the museum were similar or identical to places on the battleship we visited in Hawaii last year.  But the flight deck was pretty cool with all the fold-up-wing airplanes!

To end our evening, we headed out to Coronado island.  I think it was my favorite town that we visited.  I found my dream house (the pictures don't do it justice because the house was still under construction at that point.  Too bad I don't have 10 million bucks laying around. :)  We parked by the ocean, walked near the hotel and then across the island to another brewpub - Coronado Brewery.  Mike was in heaven because we got there at the of happy hour so he was able to try a beer and several different kinds of seafood items for half price.  The walk back took awhile but the communities were so cute it didn't matter.

Day 198 - July 17

We benefitted from some good karma today!  Last night when we played mini golf, our golf playing came with a bunch of arcade tokens.  We used them up and won a bunch of tickets and then gave them to a little kid who had fun spending them. 

Today, when we arrived at the Wild Animal Park, a couple came up to us and offered us their free one day guest passes that they got for being zoo members because they were going to expire in a few days and they didn't know anyone who wanted them!  Score!  Since we saved the admission price, we spent that money on the golf cart tour.  If you pay for a regular 1 day admission, you get to ride on the tram that circles the park and learn about the animals on the main loop.  BUT, the free tickets didn't come with that.  No big deal.  Our golf cart tour went to all kinds of neat places that the regular tram can't go.  We had a great guide and just 8 people on our cart.  It was really fun. 

Most of the animals were being lazy due to the heat, but many of them are adapated to the African heat lifestyle anyway.  There are a ton of baby elephants this year, which is what the picture shows. 

After we finished with the Animal Park, we headed to San Diego.  Finally!!!  Luckily, it's the best hotel we've been in thus far since we're going to be here for 4 nights. 

We drove a few minutes into Old Town and did an olive oil tasting.  (Bizarre and could have used some bread, but fun.) We controlled ourselves and only bought 2 bottles.  One has citrus infused in it and one is more common olive oil type herbs.  I liked the lime better than the general citrus but it was pretty strong.  The one we got is more of a "hint" of citrus.  If you're ever in San Diego, check it out.  Of course we had mexican food for dinner (yum).  We're finally adjusted to the time zone, so darkness actually happened before sleep today.