This morning I woke and booked my tickets to go to the Grand Canyon and whilst I was on the Amtrak website I decided to book some tickets to go to San Diego.
San Diego has never been high on my list of places to go, but I did however have a really good day and was really impressed with the city. Not as big as I expected, small enough to get a nice feel of in a day.
So what did I see?
I saw a city that's neat and tidy and got it's self in order, it seems to respect it's people (though I did see slot of homeless). It's laid back and has a chilled out tempo to it.
It's proud to be American but yet has a massive Mexican influence.
It also has quite a somber side to it, as a US Naval port alot of men left this city to go fight in overseas conflicts. This city pays it's respects to these people at every chance it gets.
With all this I was quite surprised to see a bit of a seedy side to the city with sex shops and hard liquor stores. Which is probably a throw back to the old wild west gold rush days. You also seem to have a counter religious culture " End of the World Stuff" to try and ward this evil out the city. If that don't work you can always get a bail bond!
If you ever get the chance to go, the waterfront is good, Tacos are good and the Gaslamp quarter is definitely a good place to spend some time.
Just a few final things, I got back to Union Station in LA for past 9:30pm and was dreading getting on the metro to travel back to my accommodation in Holywood. Three things shocked me. Firstly as I went to pay for my ticket a completely random person came running over to give me a ticket they had finished with, really did surprise me and left me almost unable to say thank you.
Secondly someone farted on the train and it amused me greatly to see everyone scout out the guilty party.
Thirdly and the thing that surprised me the most is how safe I felt, a mix of youngsters and business men + the odd Mexican , but not the homies and rappers I was expecting. In reflection I would rather be on this metro than riding on the Liverpool underground full of drunks and yobbos anyday...this really shocked me!
Don't know why, wasn't like i was heading straight outa Compton!
