Pacific Beach just north of San Diego was a place to charge batteries and relax a little after almost (only? already?) two weeks of traveling. We stayed there for four nights and enjoyed the good life with morning runs on the ocean front, breakfasts in the sun and with views of the Pacific, a couple of work hours at coffee shop terraces, and after-work beers.
We celebrated Jan’s special birthday in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, a historic neighborhood packed with bars, restaurants and clubs.
We’re not so much into zoos and aquariums, so we skipped the famous San Diego Zoo and Sea World. Instead, we saw the new James Bond movie Spectre in a drive-in cinema. On another afternoon, we visited La Jolla (sea lions are a little less ugly than sea elephants) and Torrey Pines State Park.
Some like it hot. And some really like Marilyn Monroe. So we visited Coronado Island, a small affluent city across San Diego Bay. (You really need to know How To Marry a Millionaire to live there!) Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but as for Simone, it’s rather “Blondes prefer Gentlemen”, since Jan took her to the famous Hotel Del Coronado on Corona Island, where the majority of Billy Wilder’s 1959 brilliant comedy “Some Like It Hot” was shot.
Actually, this was also the first movie the two of us saw together (Simone’s pick, obviously). Even without Marilyn, the hotel is a real jewel, right at the beach, decorated with hundreds of lamps along the roof, multiple terraces and all in all mundane, but in a charming way. Simone couldn’t have been happier.
