Selma&Louis

A weekend in San Diego

Written by Selma-n-Louis on April 18th 2007 in On the road

We decided LA wasn’t for us, and that we’d rather spend the weekend in San Diego, hoping it would be a friendlier place. So on the morning of Friday 13th (a day you don’t want to spend in a place with a bad atmosphere), we got ready to leave town. Before heading for the highway, we made a short trip up Beachwood Drive, just a few streets away from our hotel, to take a few photos of the Hollywood sign.

Then we hit the road, and our first destination was Carlsbad, halfway between LA and San Diego, where we’d planned to do some more Outlet shopping. We had a great deal of traffic out of LA (it’s probably always traffic in and out of LA), so we spent a couple of hours before arriving in Carlsbad. Because of the wrecked door on the front righthand side, Selma sat in the back set, and spent the time writing on her Mac. We got a few stares, and it might have looked like she had her bodyguard driving her or something.

As we arrived in Carlsbad, the weather was beautiful - and we really got the feeling that we were getting far south in California. We spent a few hours walking from store to store. Louis bought two pairs of shoes, some T-shirts, a pair of jeans and a pair of shorts. Selma bought.. nothing. She had planned to pick up a pair of sandals she’d seen earlier, but they didn’t have anyone left in her size. We had dinner at Ruby’s in Carlsbad before getting back on the road, with course for San Diego International Airport

Louis had called Hertz before we left LA, and they recommended taking the car to the airport in San Diego and get a new one there. We’d been a bit worried about getting a lot of hassle for the broken door, but as we arrived at the Hertz center, it turned out to be no problem at all. We did, of course, have insurance for this kind of mishaps, and that seemed to mean “We don’t ask - we just give you another car”. We talked to a very nice and helpful guy at the customer service desk, and he called up a nice, big fellah who came down with keys to three cars to choose from. Louis went for the Lincoln Towncar (which is what we originally thought we would get in Seattle), and was happy as a kid at X-mas to be able to try out a new, cool car.

After the pit stop, we continued downtown to find our hotel for the night, the Holiday Inn Express. We had booked a room for two nights through HotWire.com, and with $170 (tax included) for two nights, we thought we’d made a rather good deal. And apparently, so did the lady at the registration counter at the hotel. Because as Selma approached her, she said that the reservation was canceled. Selma asked by whom, and she didn’t know. Selma asked why, and she said the credit card was invalid. That, of course, was bullshit, and as she suggested we made a new reservation at walk-in-rates (about the double of what we had gotten through HotWire), Selma started to get pretty sure she was just being an a-hole. Selma borrowed a phone at the front desk, and called the HotWire help desk - and then the lady (conveniently) went away for a break. But fortunately, the other lady at the front desk was a lot more helpful.

To avoid making the long story even longer; we finally got a room (at the HotWire price). With one King size bed. And was promised a new room with two Queen sized beds in the morning.

After settling into the room, we went for a stroll in the neighborhood. We sat down for a drink at a House of Blues bar, and then stopped at a 7-eleven to pick up some soda and snacks (it was Friday, after all) on our way back to the hotel. Neither of us were feeling tired, so we watched some TV, ate beef jerkey - and prepared photos and text for our blog

Selma went down for a cigarette around 2am, and stopped by the night clerk to ask if we had to be out of the room by noon when we were changing rooms in the morning. Another long story short(er): They had 15 available rooms with two beds, and the clerk couldn’t understand why the dragon bitch hadn’t given us one right away. He also said that there were still two reservations in our name (something el bitcho had nagged about earlier, but obviously without fixing it), and that we would have been charged for both if he hadn’t noticed. He gave us a new room right away, so at 2:30 am we started moving down the hall. Still, we were far from tired, and didn’t manage to go to sleep before five in the morning.

Saturday April 14th

We made up for the late night by sleeping until noon on Saturday. Then we got in the car and drove a few miles to the San Diego Zoo. Neither of us are too fond of seeing animals locked up in small cages - but the Zoo is one of the things San Diego is known for, and it was an opportunity to test the zoom on our lenses.

At the zoo we got on a guided bus tour, and then walked around for a few hours. Selma had finally decided it was warm enough to wear shorts (Louis has worn shorts almost every day). Wrong decision. As soon as they entered the zoo, clouds filled up the sky and covered the sun. And thus, she spent the entire day freezing.

Watching the people at the zoo was at least as much fun as watching the animals. It actually felt really sad to see all the animals stuck in small areas, pacing restlessly around and around.

We grabbed some lunch at the zoo - Selma got some chicken fingers, and Louis tried the “rice bowl” - some kind of chinese wannabe food. He should have learned nine years ago, when we visited NY, that he ought to stay away from anything Chinese in the US. But noooo.. he had to try it. And -

Back at the hotel, Selma was focused on getting her body temperature back up to a decent level. We had some trouble with the wi-fi in our room, but a power outlet transmitter device from the front desk got us hooked up eventually. So we spent the night updating our blog and uploading pictures to Flickr. And, celebrating the stable line, Selma spent an hour talking to her GF on Skype before crawling to bed.