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Alarm went off at 7am to go move the car. I threw some clothes on and set off to the car. Nice morning anyway. Shame I got there to find a Parking Ticket tucked under the windscreen wiper!!
What a joke this is!! It turned out that on Wednesday mornings, street cleaning is done. The ticket was issued at 4am as well. So annoying. $50 as well. It's not too bad, but we were told by the hostel to park there.
I moved to another street and checked I was in the right place with a guy working in a parking lot.
When I got back to the hostel, I kicked off with them and said that first of all they don't have a parking lot like advertised and secondly the hostel staff told me where to park and that I'd be fine. There was a sign that said street cleaning on certain mornings, but where I parked was a different sign, so it didn't make any sense. But the woman last night should have explained to me, so I said I want a refund on one nights accommodation to pay for the ticket. The guy said that the manager is in around lunch so to come see her then.
I was wide awake by then and Therese was awake so we got ready. Free breakfast at the hostel is pancakes! American style ones as well and they were really nice with maple syrup. Extra nice because I cooked them myself. That's my pancake day. Therese isn't keen, so had cereal that we bought for ourselves.
We waited around a bit because I wanted to speak to this manager, but them decided to just go out and do some sightseeing. We were asking the guy in reception a few questions about public transport etc, then I asked if the manager was in yet. He said he'd already spoken to her and she'd agreed to refund one nights accommodation!! Sorted, that pays for the parking ticket. Did alright there.
We asked him about going to Tijuana, which is just down the road, in Mexico! Yeah, we're really close to the border here. He said that it's alright down there in the tourist area. Then he said, in a really really casual way, there is a lot of gang warfare going at the moment an there have been some shootings, but if we do get caught up in any cross-fire, don't worry because they're not after you and if you get shot, they didn't mean to shoot you....sweet....give that one a miss this time.
We took the public bus up to Balboa Park. The park is massive and it's really nice. There's old style buildings surrounded by big palm trees. There's lots of small art galleries and museums too, but they weren't cheap to go in so we didn't bother. Had enough of that one in NZ anyway! Actually, we were only there for about 15 minutes before Therese spilt a load of soup on her jeans.
We walked around for nearly 2 hours and it really is a lovely park. Probably the nicest we've been in since travelling.
We were tired so got the bus back and had a 30 minute nap. Getting old.
Then we caught the public bus again to Ocean Beach Farmer's Market. We bought a day bus ticket for $5 (£3.50) this morning, so it's pretty good value. The Market was fantastic. We got loads of free samples of different food. There were some really nice salsa dips, salmon dip, humous and some others stuff. We ate there as well and got a bowl of sweet corn that had been cut from a baked cob and later shared a Greek chicken kebab. Then we listened to a really good live band singing a mix of South American, reggae music. It was really good down there with a fantastic atmosphere. And it was right near the beach front too, so we went down there for a look at sunset. Bit windy and cold though!
We took the bus back and then the trolley (tram) this time. In San Diego the trains blast their horns and it makes that noise that you hear on films. Yeah, I know I keep referencing similarities to films.
This weird little Mexican guy started talking to us on the tram. He was out of his head and kept taking a swig from his little bottle of alcohol.
On the walk back to the hostel, we stopped off at Ghillardinho chocolate shop. And we got free samples!! I love all these free samples!!!
It's a nice city is San Diego, better than I actually thought it would be, especially the Gaslamp Quarter where we're staying.
We were pretty tired from all the walking around so went back to the hostel to do some washing and a bit of research into some of our next stops on our road trip.
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