Leaving Las Vegas...

We left Las Vegas yesterday, but not as early as planned due to Robert's desire to head to Fremont Street to pick up some souvenirs and the promises we made to the kids to visit the M&M store on the strip.  I saw everyone's warnings about Fremont Street at night but somehow thought that it may be better at 10 a.m.  Wrong-o.  A man there was holding up a sign saying that his wife had a sex change and ran off with his girlfriend so I ended up having to explain that to the kids.  And then there were the grow your own boyfriend/girlfriend and worse in the stores that the kids, of course, were the first to notice.  You can't say Vegas isn't educational, although it may not be the education their teachers were hoping they'd get while we were away...

 Anyone who knows Danica at all knows how much she LOVES M&M's and how excited she would be getting to choose her own mixture from the wall of them.

We ended up arriving in San Diego after dark last night so didn't do much exploring, or any for that matter.  I came to a couple of conclusions though:
1)  Drivers in Los Angeles are more considerate than those in San Diego and actually let you in when you signal whereas the drivers here just seem to block your way completely and ignore your signal light
2)  The fact that motorcycles do not have to follow the lane rules of the road and are allowed to weave in and out of traffic is insanity; thank goodness helmet laws still apply here
3)  There are no driveways and never enough parking for the number of cars in any given place, leaving lanes of parked cars along both sides of every street no matter how busy or how narrow.

This morning, we planned on heading to the zoo for a couple of hours and then doing some other.    We ended up at the zoo until almost 4 pm!  Apparently we walked 7 miles when all was said and done.  The funny thing is that we had tickets to the Kangaroo (hop on hop off) bus and didn't use them at all, electing to walk everywhere instead.  Robert was disappointed that all the animals seemed to be sleeping and I think we missed the elephants during our walk about (although we did see them while on our bus tour).  It was nice and sunny and warmer though so I was happy.

 The Aerial Tram - Dad, you would have hated it!

After the zoo, we attempted to locate the Spreckles Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park but there was no parking or any place to stop near by and it seemed rather busy in the area so we headed over a bridge scarier than the Mackinaw Bridge (there was no green grate but it was super long and super high with guard concrete that didn't seem high enough for the speeds, curves, and height of the bridge) over to Coronado Island to check out the beaches of glittering sand and catch a glimpse of the Hotel Del Coronado.  Apparently it's been the setting of many movies as well as the inspiration for the Wizard of Oz.  The kids ventured into the ocean to jump the waves, but other than my feet, the rest of us stayed on the sand.

 Duncan found some sea creatures.

After that, we headed to the Children's Pool in La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya as in Oscar de la versus like jolly, which is how your non-Spanish speaking blog author and friend pronounced it).  The wind was whipping and there weren't as many seals as we'd expected but it was still an amazing sight.  We were especially fond of the big grey one that seemed to be putting on a big show for the cameras.

Then we headed to Roberto's Taco Shop for dinner.  Or so we thought.  Either it changed names to Mr. Rubiberto's or we were at the wrong place or Roberto's is the nickname.  Directly across the street, though, was Belmont Park so Robert and the kids decided they needed to ride the rollercoaster from 1925 before dinner rather than after.

They had so much fun that they rode it a second time before we headed for dinner.  Everyone else had the tacos but I opted for the California burrito that I'd read about.  It was good but the guacomole was a little spicy for my wimpy taste buds.

Then after bringing Manilyne and the kids back to the inn, Robert and I had a little "date".  We walked down the street, debating between a drink or dessert and ended up settling on The Baked Bear which had a line snaking out the door when we drove by it earlier.  It is a custom-made ice cream sandwich shop.  You pick your flavour of cookie or a brownie or a combo for the top and bottom, your ice cream for the middle, an optional topping, and whether or not you want it slightly heated.  I opted for a peanut butter cookie top with a brownie bottom and a salted caramel fudge ice cream.  It was pretty delectable.  Robert had a cookies and cream cookie, a brownie, cookie dough ice cream and caramel topping; his was a little too sweet.

And tomorrow we head back up north, picking Robert's parents up and venturing into LA for 3 nights.  There is certainly no time to rest while on vacation!