Traci and I headed to San Diego to catch the weekend interleague series between the Padres and the Mariners at brand new Petco Park. We took the early morning Alaska direct flight, unhappy to find out after we arrived that our pre-reserved seats in the middle of the plane had been mysteriously changed to the back of our 100% full plane. Fortunately, we enjoyed a tasty cinnamon scone on the plane and arrived on time in San Diego.
Upon arriving in San Diego – the airport is located 2 blocks from the ocean in the center of town – a short taxi ride took us to the brand new Omni hotel which is physically connected via skybridge with the baseball stadium. After checking in, we walked past the San Diego convention center toward the giant USS Midway aircraft carrier which serves as a quite interesting museum. Included in the $15 entrance fee is a small digital audio recorder which contains a plethora of tidbits on aircraft, ships and history. Wandering around the various decks of the carrier during the self guided tour was quite fascinating – while the carriers are quite large, it seems so cramped inside given the huge number of sailors and aircraft previously inhabiting the ship. Even the flight deck with its runways and catapult seemed so small given its role of landing and launching jet fighters. After leaving the Midway, we went to San Diego’s Seaport village for a nice lunch at a village café. Traci enjoyed a tasty wrap while Ray liked his Chicken Caesar Salad Sandwich. From the café, we took a ride on a San Diego “Seal.” Both Seattle and Boston have “Duck Tours” featuring old World War II amphibious landing vehicles that take tourists around downtown and into the water. San Diego has “Seals” which are more modern open air hybrid busses/boats which tour the city and head out onto the North Bay where we saw marine life as well as many ships and landmarks. Our tour director was quite good – she had all sorts of interesting facts about San Diego and its history. On the ocean we saw the USS Ronald Reagan (America’s newest aircraft carrier and found a whole bunch of Sea Lions sunning themselves on barges.
After a long first day in San Diego, we headed back to the Omni hotel and crossed the skybridge to Petco Park. We got prime seats using the ticket broker stubhub.com -- 2nd row behind first base for the Friday night game -- so we spent the whole game in our seats. Gil Meche didn’t have his best game and the Mariners fell behind early – but mounted a nice rally and ended up winning in a 14-5 blowout (the only victory of the weekend). The San Diego fans were quite dedicated – it was amazing how many stayed to the end despite the lopsided victory. After the great victory we headed toward the “Gaslamp Quarter” which is San Diego’s nightlife area for dinner. After checking out several restaurants, we ended up at an Italian place called La Bocca – both of us had seafood pasta dishes which were quite good. Because of the baseball game, dinner was quite late and we didn’t get back to the Omni until well after midnight.
On Saturday, we planned on taking a break from baseball and headed to San Diego’s famous Balboa Park – a collection of 13 museums plus the San Diego Zoo. Because of the limited time for this trip, we passed up seeing the zoo (as well as Seaworld) and saw several of San Diego’s museums in the park – Japanese Friendship Garden, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego Hall of Champions Sports museum, the Railroad museum, the Museum of Man and the Natural History museum. Ray thought the Sports museum was the most impressive despite having an obvious focus on San Diego teams and athletes – Seattle needs one! Traci was impressed with the Graham Flint Gigapxl photography exhibit at the Museum of Photographic Arts. The huge, wall-sized photos were taken with a custom built camera at 1000 to 4000 megapixels producing incredible resolution. Most of the other museums had some interesting exhibits, but they clearly aren’t the Smithsonians. Having checked out all of the food places in the park we settled on eating at the Art Museum (Traci had a nice soup and salad combo, Ray had a chicken Caesar salad). From Balboa park we took a taxi back to the Omni and went to the hotel pool/gym – the pool area was way too small for the number of people hanging around the pool after the afternoon baseball game concluded (we missed the Mariners 8-5 loss). The gym was small but well equipped with brand new machines. From the Omni we headed to Horton Center Plaza which is San Diego’s downtown shopping center located next to the Gaslamp Quarter – the shopping mall was an unimpressive open air collection of the usual suspects including Nordstrom and Macy’s. After a disappointing shopping expedition we headed back to the Omni to enjoy a scrumptious dinner at McCormicks & Schmicks. The chain has a location in Seattle famous for its happy hour – Traci and Ray had a great dinner at the location located in the Omni. Traci had a nice Mahi-Mahi entrée and Ray had what he described as the best $19.95 Top Sirloin steak he ever had. You would normally expect to pay extraordinary high prices at a restaurant located in the lobby of a hotel across the street from a ballpark, but the prices were quite reasonable. We noticed that other steak places including Flemings (located 2 blocks from the Omni) seemed to have significantly lower prices than Seattle. We decided to have dessert at the San Diego Ghiradelli, also located at the Gaslamp Quarter. Ray loves the sundaes at Ghiradelli’s and stops there whenever visiting San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago and now San Diego. After another busy day it was back to the Omni.
On our last day in San Diego, we started the day at a nice breakfast spot called Cafe 222 located 3 blocks from the Omni. It was an extremely busy breakfast spot, Traci enjoyed a delicious waffle while Ray had a ham and cheese omelette with tasty crispy potatoes. From breakfast we went to Petco Park for the Sunday afternoon game. We purchased regular outfield tickets from the Padres and spent time wandering around the stadium during the game – Petco Park is a most impressive stadium for family enjoyment of baseball. Behind center field is a large Park area accessible during the game which contains a whiffle ball diamond hosting organized kids play during the Padres game. A large grass lined hill permits viewing of the Padres game from a picnic blanket. Even a large scoreboard screen faces outward from the Park so the picnic crowd won’t miss any of the action. Petco also has a rich assortment of electronic video game kiosks and both a batting cage and a fast pitch contest. A worker actually creates custom baseball bats for fans while you wait($70). The actual architecture of the stadium reminds me of Seahawks stadium – somewhat plain but with good sight lines in the seating areas. I think the biggest problem with the stadium is my perceived unfairness of the bullpens – The Padres get a nice fenced bullpen in left center field while the Mariners were placed along the 1st base line without protection from the field (and the fans). I don’t know if any other ballparks treat teams so differently but it does seem unfair. I think Petco Park is the most family friendly baseball stadium I’ve seen so far. I do believe SBC park in San Francisco is the best park for non-baseball fans and of course, Safeco field is the best park for baseball fans.
Our visit to San Diego concluded by traveling to the airport via taxi. The only major problem with the whole trip occurred when the friendly Alaska Airlines people told us that our flight had already left despite us being 90 minutes early for our ticketed flight. We learned that Alaska had cancelled our flight and rescheduled us for the earlier flight (but neither of us were notified). So we had to endure a 4 hour wait for the final flight of the night (which was delayed an additional hour) bringing us back to Seattle at 1 AM. I guess the moral of this story is in the age of ever changing airline schedules be sure and check your flights the day before you leave home on the internet!
