San Diego Jan 11th – Jan. 18th 2009

What a wonderful time we've had so far in San Diego!!! We've stayed at the Southwest, Silver Gate and San Diego Yacht Clubs. They were all wonderful clubs and all with great folks and amenities. We arrived first at Southwest, tied up, and went to the San Diego boat show. We ran into John, who has the Nordhavn Motorsailer we had seen previously in Dana Point, so we had lunch with him while we shared laughs and boating stories. Overall, the boat show was somewhat of a disappointment for us, since it was geared primarily towards sport fishing and trailerable boats.

The next day, we rode our bikes from Southwest Yacht Club over to West Marine and used our x-mas gift card. (Thanks Mom and Dad!) Then one day we made the mistake of doing a Mai Tai crawl. We started at the Best Western, the “Blue Wave” and they have a very good Mai Tai with excellent fruit juice and just the right amount of rum. We then proceeded to “Humphrey’s By the Bay” and the one there was not so good. We then walked to “Bali Hai” restaurant and their Mai Tai contains no juice at all, just all alcohol. That was the mistake…. the next day we were both sorry for drinking the third Mai Tai even though this was over the course of 3-4 hours…the last one was a kicker. We spent the next day just recovering. Damn, it is tough getting old.

The next day was the 15^th and we were to meet Kelli and Loe' in Los Angeles so we could see Nikki perform in the new production of Pippin. So we rented a car and off we went on our drive from San Diego to Los Angeles. We stayed at the Kyoto Hotel downtown and were able to walk to the Mark Taper Forum. We met Nikki prior to the performance and she apologized in advance, thinking as this was their first preview they might not make it through without stopping. However Nikki was great, the cast fantastic and the entire performance went off without any significant issues and was simply wonderful. We spent time after the performance having sushi with Nikki, and then took her home to Burbank, so we got to bed quite late.

The next day we headed back to San Diego with Loe' and Kelli, had a late lunch at the Yacht Club, and simply relaxed for the evening. The next day we took the boat out into the ocean and saw several Grey whales. Then later, we went to Old Town San Diego and had the most wonderful time. Thank you Kelli and Loe', it was fantastic to see you and spend time together!

After Loe' and Kelli left on Sunday, we met up with our friends Del and Trudy on their boat, Island Grace so we could plan our trip from San Diego to Ensenada. Since they had done this cruise a number if times, we felt confident traveling with them into Mexico. We would be leaving at first light on Jan. 19^th, so off to bed we went.