Being married to Alex, I've had to visit a lot of airspace museums over the years. The very best of them, hands down (in my opinion), is the one in Tuscon, AZ. And this one, in San Diego (again in my opinion), is hardly even worth a visit. For one thing, they seem slightly confused as to which side we were on during the war. Several exhibits fawning over German planes, and especially the one raving about a Nazi fighter-pilot, made me wonder. As to the museum collection, it is mostly papier-mache replicas of something or other. The highlight is a Moon rock, which they keep inside a thick glass case... as someone who'd had a chance to see and touch a Moon rock at the Smithsonian, I was less than impressed. In short, my recommendation is to spend your time and money on something else, there are plenty of things to see and do in Balboa Park.
For example, the Automotive museum, right next door. Apart from an interesting collection of old cars and motorcycles (most of them red and some of them you can climb into), they have the Louie Mattar's Fabulous Car, which is truly unique.
The car is based on a 1947 Cadillac, with a few enhancements by Louie... like a portable phone (that's the 50s, remember), a public address system, and a hookah on the dashboard... as well as an electric stove, a refrigerator, a washing machine, a chemical toilet, an ironing board, a medicine cabinet, and a kitchen sink, all in the back seat. You can see some of this equipment in the photo below, the other items (when not in use) can be stored under the back seat cushions.
The thing sticking out of the right front fender is a shower head, the car carries 50 gallons of water (so you can take a shower without stopping the car, or use a drinking fountain over the taillight). The trailer carries an additional 30 gallons of water, 230 gallons of gas, 15 gallons of oil, and has a dining area at the end.
In 1952, the guy (with two friends) drove the Cadillac from San Diego to New York and back without stopping. Their trip totaled 6,320 miles and required refueling from a moving gas truck three times. They could even change a tire without stopping the car, from a movable platform that attaches to the car when needed and is stored in the trailer other times (at the museum, they show a movie of how exactly that was done).
After these two museums, it was definitely time for lunch. We walked back to El Prado and went into the Panama 66 restaurant, adjacent to the San Diego Museum of Art (which was next on our list anyway). I highly recommend their cocktails, especially El Presidente. The menu is somewhat limited because their kitchen is under construction, so no hot food - only salads and sandwiches, but quite adequate for lunch. You can sit in the garden and watch the people outside in the plaza.
After lunch, we went to the art museum, which was OK - but nothing special. If you don't have time for both, I would definitely recommend Timken over this one. As an extra bonus, Timken has a whole room full of Russian icons (which I forgot to mention in my previous post).
And then we were done with Balboa park. Next on our schedule was the famous Gaslamp Quarter. Driving from Balboa park, we approached it from north-east and parked in a public lot at the corner of Eight Avenue and C Street. (That's where Alex saw a green trolley, going down C Street.)
Then we started walking along, generally in a south-westerly direction. As you might remember, originally I gave Alex about half-an-hour to get bored by the Gaslamp Quarter, but in reality it took him no more than 15 minutes to say that he's seen it and got an impression, and let's go somewhere else. So we crossed over the train tracks, came to the San Diego Convention Center (where MathWorks had the company meeting three years ago, so I kind of knew the place), climbed over it (they have stairs going up and down), and found ourselves near the harbor again.
From there, we took a ferry to Coronado island.
This was the least successful part of our trip. Although sunny, the day turned colder, and the wind there was simply vicious... we got some souvenirs, took a couple of pictures, and jumped on the very next ferry back. Except, not exactly back - there are two ferry lines to Coronado, one from the Convention Center (every half an hour), and the other one from the Embarcadero, right next to the USS Midway (once an hour). That's the one we took on the way back, because it brought us close to the restaurant I had in mind for dinner.
Lion's Share has a game-heavy menu, nice cocktails, a decent wine list, and a quirky atmosphere. Lots of polished wood, candles, flowers, hunting theme to match the menu.
They have really good deals during happy hour, so we started with a couple of cocktails and appetizers (deviled eggs and rabbit sausage). If I lived in the neighborhood I'd go there all the time. Then we had dinner with a couple of glasses of Portuguese red. My quail was delicious, with a nice combination of sweet-and-sour (waffle and greens).
This was a perfect ending of the busy day.
>> Next day
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