San Diego

After less than a week in the States I got to go on my first trip out of LA. We left for San Diego late Thursday afternoon. We were going to be spending the end of some college friends of Alexander's spring break at the beach home of one of the friends' aunt. The beach home is right on the marina on Coronado Island. A sweet house with a view of yachts, palm trees and the city across the bay, decorated in a strange nautical theme.
This was basically my big introductory weekend to a big group of Alexander's friends. I was of course nervous, but everything turned out great. It was a fun group of people and everybody was very welcoming and considerate towards me, the new guy. There were moments when I felt very much out of place and I realized that sometimes even if you do understand the language people are speaking it does not always help.
Twice during our stay in San Diego I got asked for my ID. It pissed me off as I did not have my passport with me, and apparently SA driver's licenses don't count, but at least some people still think I'm under 21. Which is almost fine by me.
We spent a lot of our time playing board games and chatting until very early in the morning.
Friday we went to the Museum of Creation and Earth History. A frightening museum to say the least. Sure, it is actually funny, but at the same time quite scary. It's a museum run by the ICR (http://www.icr.org/). These people fall in the Scary Christian category and is very much opposed to evolutionary science. I wish I could go into detail about some of the things I saw here. Just wrong in so many ways!
On Saturday Alexander and I drove into town looking for a lunch spot. We drove around the attractive Balboa Park and ended up downtown in the old Gaslamp District. We walked blocks searching in vain for a nice coffee or lunch spot and found downtown San Diego to be rather generic. It felt like being in the Northern suburbs of Cape Town. Very Keg and sports bar like. And the St. Patrick's Day celebrations did not help much.
We drove out to Ocean Beach where we had lunch at an organic vegan spot. Ever had cookies with vegan choc chips in? Yum.
Early afternoon we got back to LA. After dropping of some friends and picking up a couple of grocery items we headed back to our apartment in a slightly scruffier part of town.
"I really like LA better than San Diego," noted Alexander.
I agreed. I've only spent a couple days in LA, but I can see that I am going to enjoy living here, much more than I would in San Diego.