Merv & Linda’s Excellent So. California Adventure
- 2004
Day 1 (Fri., Oct. 1)

We departed Omaha Oct. 1, 2004 for California 8:40 a.m and changed planes in Salt Lake City. Arrived Los Angeles LAX airport about noon, got our baggage and caught the courtesy van over to Budget where we had a convertible waiting for us. After waiting in a long line, we finally got to our little (yellow) Ford convertible.

Unfortuately our four bags (Linda’s big suitcase, her medium one, her shoe suitcase, and my one small case wouldn’t fit in the trunk. We’d never thought of that when the small convertible was ordered. After squishing the large bag and one of the smaller ones into the trunk, it was decided that the only way we could get the others into the (small) backseat was to put the top down. So the rest of the bags were put into the back seat….leaving no room for anything else…it’s good thing I limited her to only three suit cases!

So finally about 2:00 p.m., after checking out the convertible, with top down, and limited instructions on how to get out of Budget and onto the freeway system for San Diego….off the Linda and I go on our So. California adventure.

The traffic was terrible already in the Los Angeles area. We finally go onto I-5 which took us right into San Diego, but it took about 3 ½ hrs. to go what should have taken about 1 ½ hrs. because of the traffic. It’s been about 30 plus years since I traveled to San Diego and don’t remember much about it but it’s all residential now from LA into San Diego. You can’t tell where one town stops and the other begins.

Fortunately, our hotel was just off the downtown exit in San Diego. We had reservations for the next two nights at the Radisson Harbor View hotel, a newly renovated french art deco hotel located in downtown San Diego. We were upgraded to a nice harbor view room complements of the hotel management when we got there. After parking our car and unloading the Linda’s luggage and my small bag (I want to point out again that my bag was a small one), we checked in, and got to our room. It was very nice with a view of the harbor and the downtown area from our balcony. By this time it was getting dark and we were hungry so decided to see if we could get some Mexican food, as I was thirsty for a real California margarita.

We decided to check out the Gaslamp Quarter which wasn’t very far from the hotel. It wasn’t too expensive to take a cab so we had the front desk order us one and in a few minutes we were in the Gaslamp Quarter walking around. The Radisson is very close to most downtown activities but the parking can sometimes be a problem. So we found that taking a taxi was very quick and inexpensive from the hotel and solved the parking problem.

The Gaslamp Quarter is similar to Omaha’s Old Market district but much larger. It consists of sidewalk cafes and open air restaurants, jazz clubs, late night dancing, resident artists and micro breweries all contributing to the festive spirit of the area. Shops and galleries of every variety are scattered throughout the 16 square block district. http://www.gothere.com/sandiego/gaslamp.htm

Not knowing where to go, we walked until we finally stumbled into a Mexican restaurant called the Los Panchos De Charly. Mexican Grill & Cantina http://lospanchosdecharly.com/ . Fortunately, it more than exceeded our expectations. Not only was the food and service excellent, the margaritas were great and the live mariachi music was very entertaining.

After finishing our meal we wandered around the downtown area for awhile. The five day"San Diego Film Festival" http://www.sdff.org was being held at the Pacific Theatres movie theatre in the Gaslamp District. We didn’t go in but stood and read the marquees. Most were "artsy" films we would never see nor would want to see ( a lot of films about alternative life styles and social issue films that may play in larger metropolitan areas on the East and West coast but not in mid-America.)

Deciding to finally call it a day, we hailed a cab and went back to our hotel for a good nights sleep.