La Jolla Cove, San Diego - September 2012

At the recommendation of our driver (James from Flexi Transport) we visited La Jolla Cove (pronounced La Hoya) for a few hours.  We had just been to see Torrey Pines Golf Course and we had time to spend a few hours looking around the beach area.  We had considered making a brief visit to Mexico but decided against it as other people had bad experiences crossing the border etc.

La Jolla was an interesting place full of bird life and seals galore.  We could walk along the beach front and there were several tourist attractions to choose from so we decided to walk down into the cave.  The entrance down into the cave was done many years ago and was very much a health hazard walking our way down the steep steps that were rotting in places and damp and slippery.  We soldiered on and made it to the bottom to see the Sea Lion that was living in the cave.  The were boutique shops and coffee/lunch places along the way.  We had lunch in a little coffee shop that had free Wi-Fi which was good and we could catch up with our news at home.

There were a lot of nice houses in the area and we checked out a retirement home that was right on the beach that had it's own putting green.  After a couple of hours we rang James to pick us up and take us back into the city to see the USS Midway which was on our list.

  

USS Midway Museum, San Diego - September 2012

Our visit to see the USS Midway Museum was a worthwhile experience.  This was the last stop off for our San  Diego experience for today.  We hired a car to drive us for the day around San Diego via the hotel Concierge. Our driver was James from "Flexi Transport" who we would highly recommend.  James picked us up from the hotel, drove us to Torrey Pines Golf Club and waited while we checked out the course and the Pro Shop, then took us to La Jolla Cove and dropped us off for a look around. He picked us up a few hours later when we rang him and drove us to the USS Midway at the San Diego waterfront - all for a charge of $80 for the whole day.  Amazing!  We were very impressed with the service and wished we could get something like that in Australia and other places we visit. It was A1 service which we appreciated and he also did not press us for a tip - so we were happy to give him one.

The USS Midway was enormous and there was a huge crowd there - perhaps a lot to do with the fact that is was 9/11 anniversary and there was to be a Memorial Service on the flight deck.  The museum was very well set out with good crowd control.  We managed to see the most of it and you could not help but feel very insignificant while on board due to the magnitude of it all.  Fighter Planes were packed inside like matchbox toys and the flight deck had just about every fighter plane you could think of.  We got to go downstairs and upstairs to get a good insight into the lifestyle on board ship.

We were all impressed, especially the boys who wanted to check it all out and were taken out kicking and screaming.

We decided that we knew our way around San Diego so well that we would walk back to our hotel which showed us some new aspects of the city we had not seen.