La Jolla and San Diego

After a day of driving across the Arizona dessert and the Great Walmart Quest (see below), we arrived at the La Jolla Shores hotel in time enjoy a delicious dinner at the restaurant there, followed by a walk on the beach that is right outside our room! We couldn't wait for daylight to see what this place really looks like. Our room is large and comfortable. The hotel looks like a hacienda, with courtyards full of lush plantings. All the windows in the restaurant look out on the beach. It's really nice!

On the way here, we decided we needed to stop and pick up a few necessities - like flip shades for mr. lo (he left his in the car at the Manchester airport) and a new suitcase for me (the past two trips have done my old one in). As we were driving along we used our trusty Garmin Nuvi GPS to locate a Walmart somewhere in the boonies of Arizona and were surprised to find that there was one just 1.9 miles away. Although this seemed unlikely, as we were driving by cotton farms at the time, we followed Nuvi's directions and sure enough, soon came upon a very large building off of a secondary road with Walmart - Distribution Center - painted on it. Hmmm. Oh well - back to the highway. We'll look later. (We did find an actual Walmart Superstore in Yuma just before crossing the border into California and were able to pick up everything we needed, including a large bottle of Merlot, which we enjoyed on our balcony once we arrived at La Jolla Shores.)

This morning, we were up bright and early for a long walk on the beach and the neighborhood near the hotel. We have an amazing view from our room of the beach and the ocean. I could just sit on the balcony all day and watch the waves break and the people pass by. The weather is perfect and wow, are the homes here beautiful! All the yards, while very small, are perfectly groomed and landscaped with flowers and plants, like Bird of Paradise, that I have seen only in floral arrangements. We are right near the University of California San Diego campus and its Scripps Oceanographic Institute. There is a large palm tree-filled park next to our hotel and the ocean is full of surfers. Lots of people, many with dogs, are walking the beach.

After breakfast, we drove to San Diego's Old Town State Historic Park and took a trolley tour of the city, stopping for a while to walk around inside the Hotel Del Coronado and go out to its beautiful white sand beach.

The view we had of the city while driving over the Coronado bridge was breath-taking.








We spent most of the afternoon at the world famous and beautiful San Diego Zoo. We ended our day at Fred's Mexican Cafe for a great Mexican meal. There are lots more photos on Flickr.