San Diego and Armchair Travelers
San Diego Highlights
Near San Diego is a fish market I’ve heard about in La Jolla. Place your food order at the counter and one of the fellows will bring it to your table. We were pleased with our choices, Dungeness Crab Salad and a Halibut Sandwich. Take home fresh, fresh fish to cook or gift to a friend. If aroma is your first sign of quality in a fish market, I recommend El Pescador.
The Beau is a newly renovated boutique hotel in the Gaslamp District of San Diego. There’s a lot to love about this place. I would definitely stay there again. Great location, price and service. My first stop of the morning was the free coffee bar with three flavors of Starbucks at the back of the first floor including outdoor seating. The hotel lobby bar in addition to drinks serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. The breakfast menu worked for me with banana bread and honey butter and a fruit platter or a poached egg dish with Mexican flavors. Get more steps walking along the Embarcadero of San Diego harbor which has many tourist attractions like the Navy aircraft carrier, Midway, The Star of India merchant ship, convention center, hotels, restaurants and activities for kids. The Santa Fe Railroad and Ticket Office is right there too, beckoning me to take a ride somewhere. The best photo opportunity is The Kiss opposite the Midway. I saw wedding parties, dancers and lovers all posing in front of the statue to have their picture taken. Everyone appears to be having fun in San Diego!
Little Italy is nearby and a friend who lives in the area directed us to Nonna. Old fashioned or should I say classic food and atmosphere? Love the photo of the nonnas! Reminded me of the new Netflix movie with Susan Sarandon. I had a wonderful pork shank that fell off the bone and had braised all afternoon flavorful.
Hard to get reservations at Animae and Mabel’s Gone Fishing were worth the trouble. The food was high level at both, Asian Fusion at Animae and Basque at Mabel’s. Fancy everything at Animae from the green velvet booths and gold light fixtures to the ‘wontons’ that were really fabulous pork and shrimp dumplings. Plain and simple dishes, green butter leaf salad and garlic gnocchi at Mabel’s. The expense of Animae makes it hard to recommend unless you have plenty to spend. Don’t pass up Mabel’s if you are anywhere close by. You know how I feel about Basque cuisine. And French cuisine! The only French we had time for was the Park Bistro, just outside Balboa Park, so it’s easy to plan a meal there before or after getting 10 or 20 thousand steps inside this amazing Olmsted inspired park. Spectacular landscapes, architecture, museums and a Japanese Garden. It’s hard to decide what you don’t have time to see. One dive bar of note for old punk rock fans is the Cherrybomb. When you’re hot and tired or need to do laundry–this is the place. Our visit coincided with the movie Speed being played starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reaves. (1994) Just a few minutes refreshes!
Armchair Travelers: One of My Target Audiences
Love later in life is my genre of romance. Some portion of my readers are bound to be armchair travelers for health or other reasons. Maybe like my character Laurence, the retired Boeing engineer, who never liked traveling to begin with but likes reading about it. I am lucky to be connected to the Laguna Woods crowd because my mother-in-law has been part of the community. I’ve met many people here and know them to be intellectually vigorous and fun loving. My other book presentations have been well received here. I wasn’t surprised at all that more than 20 people wanted to come hear my newest presentation, “How I became an author of four romance novels.” (You may recall this was the most widely attended author event ever at the Women’s University Club in Seattle.) It’s a humorous short version of my writing life and how I structure my novels that I hope to give many more times. They were a wonderful audience. They got all my jokes! Participation in the Q&A was close to 100%. Everyone was complimentary afterwards. I look forward to coming back again. The co-hosts love having company.
“Love later in life is the genre of romance I write in. All my characters are middle aged or older, smart, successful, fun loving and believe that love matters. Everyone is healthy and wealthy or mostly worry free. Most of them are having great sex and more of it than anyone you ever knew in your life. The ending is always happy or at least hopeful. All these elements are what makes it ROMANCE.”