Let’s be upfront – this is possibly our favourite USA city so far. It’s very clean and green. The weather is great and such a lovely temperature. The sun seems to shine all the time, and the light is magical.

In an around it environs are lovely places to visit. Our favourite place was La Jolla Ecological Reserve. It was a bit of a bike ride from where we were staying. Even though it’s meant to be a cycle friendly city, a lot of the bike lanes are along the side of busy roads, so not as nice as I was hoping it would be. However, we found lots of side roads to cycle, through lovely residential areas, which were usually very smart and a nice mix of architectural styles. We could probably live in this part of San Diego if we could afford it, which we can’t! Property in the San Diego area, either to rent or buy, is expensive and the cost of living is high here too, for example food prices! We were talking to a mechanic who’s getting rid of his car because he can’t afford the payments on it; he’s trying his best to eat healthily and save for his kids future but is struggling – and he is working full-time. 

Anyway, I digress, the reason that we liked it so much at La Jolla – there is a great colony of sea lions. They are so funny and noisy; they are really entertaining. There are also some harbour seals and cormorants are nesting right by the path. We were watching them rear their chicks, they are so attentive to them. We did a kayak tour; we were hoping to see more but they have something called a red tide so the water wasn’t as clear as we hoped, and the tide was out so we didn’t see much of the caves. We enjoyed the kayaking as it was on the ocean, so a lot of wave motion, which we have previously avoided. 

We had a brilliant night out in the Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego – thanks to our friends Dan and Geraldine who recommended it. It was a place called The Shout! House, where there are two piano players on stage at the same time, who take requests, do popular songs and ad lib, a bit like a comedy club, with music. They invite people on stage to dance and perform so it’s really a fun night out. One couple got up to their request, and the man suddenly dropped to one knee, got a ring box out and proposed – thankfully she said yes! We should have had a second great night out – one of the main reasons for coming to San Diego was to see the Stereophonics, a Welsh band, and probably our favourite. That afternoon we were getting ready to go out, checked our emails, and saw one telling us how to claim our refund for the show! Yes, it had been postponed until September, no good for us. We are still very disappointed about that!

We walked around the Old Town State Park which is where San Diego was born when the first Spanish settlers arrived into Southern California. This is free, and a nice place to wander around, but is very touristy with lots of shops and restaurants. Another great place I visited was Chicano Park, it has an interesting history. It is a Mexicanos area of San Diego and was broken up by the building of an 8 lane freeway. The locals with help from the city college protested and there are lovely vibrant murals painted on the concrete pillars that support the freeway. These murals tell the history of the protest and the area, and really are magnificent. They are very proud of their murals, and have recently restored them to keep them vibrant.

Interestingly, we are seeing a lot of RV’s parked around San Diego, even though we understand you should not park overnight; a lot of them seem long term, we just don’t know how or where they dispose of their waste! 💩 Sadly there is a lot of homelessness, little tent villages along the interstate as well as in the city; people walk around with shopping trolleys full of their possessions. A lot of them seem mentally unwell, it is so sad 😢 Unfortunately San Diego is a very expensive city to live in, so you can see why there are high levels of homelessness and people feeling that they have to live in cars, RV’s or tents. I looked at the statistics for homelessness in the USA compared to UK. It does seem like there’s more street homelessness here, in the UK some people are counted as homeless but are actually in temporary accommodation.

It seems the world is a small place! We were driving along the interstate, just getting into a traffic jam and someone from North Wales passed us, took a video and sent it to their parents who are friends of ours, amazing 🤩 

We really enjoyed people watching here too. It actually feels like a cultural experience, as the way of like here is so different to the UK, but in a nice way. Clearly a lot of people enjoy being outside, we saw so many people enjoying the weather and scenery, big group picnics area thing here.

Of course, it does look like the American dream and way of life we have seen in so many movies. Talking of which, we had to go to the bar used in Top Gun, and that was fun!

So, San Diego was overall a success for us, nice city, nice places to visit, good night life (despite there being no Stereophonics!!) and Shaun has been fitted with new tyres, expensive but makes the ride so much nicer!

Now to get back to the desert, open spaces and great scenery, next stop Anza Borrego State Park…………………