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Sarah and I differ in our views of San Diego. Where Sarah sees gritty street life I see people who would do you over as soon as look at you. Where Sarah sees an admittedly beautiful stretch of cliffs along the coast I see a smoggy sea-scape not nearly as impressive as the Sydney coastline.
Maybe it was the bed bugs in the hostel, maybe the frantic schedule of jaw dropping sight seeing in Yosemite and Death Valley, but San Diego left a bad taste in my mouth. We stayed in Ocean Beach, or OB as the locals call it, which is like a mixture of Bondi Beach and Newtown but not as picturesque or interesting as either of them. OB feels like where American surfers go to die. We never found out why they were so many limbless men in wheelchairs. Were they returned abandoned US soldiers? The number of totally down and out people is a depressing reminder of the USAs inability to look after their own citizens. For the richest country on earth their strict adherence to ‘survival of the fittest’ has some shocking consequences that could be easily avoided if only the country’s knee-jerk reaction to socialism and taxes could be overcome.
San Diego has a faux Old Town, a faux little Italy, a faux Gas Lamps district and an invisible Chinatown. We did a tour via rental car on a Saturday morning before returning it and didn’t feel a strong need to go back to any of these places in our remaining time there. Faux Old Town felt like a theme park dedicated to someone’s impression of what San Diego once looked like but the faux old buildings filled with chain bars and restaurants were more depressing than intersting. Their Little Italy takes Leichardt and notches it down a couple of levels in authenticity.
At this stage it wasn’t looking good for San Diego. We returned the rental car at the airport and walked back along the harbour, past the aircraft carrier and associated US Navy vessels, past the tourist boats and had lunch in Little Italy, where they have posters hanging from the street lights of every famous American of Italian heritage they can think of. As far as I know none of these celebrities have an association with San Diego or even know that their photo is hanging in the street. It looks as though someone has just googled the images and printed them in grainy black and white to try and remind people that they are supposed to be in Little Italy, not just a random collection of unremarkable shops.
As I count it there are four redeeming features of San Diego that we came across, and I’m not talking about the zoo or Sea World which we avoided. Balbao Park has most of the cities museums and art galleries located in one spot. The whole area was developed for a 1915 Panama expo competing with San Francisco in the same year for most impressive expo. San Diego focussed on culture and art and the result is an expansive park with a lot of very interesting looking museums and courtyards which I was too footsore to walk through. There is also a large goldfish pond and a smallish botanical glass shed. Any other city and the park would be unremarkable but in San Diego this breathed life into what had otherwise been a dull and sterile experience, although the jumbo jets taking off from the nearby airport did break the peace and quiet somewhat as we tried to nap in the park.
The second good point to San Diego was unsurprisingly where all the rich people hang out. Corinado is kind of an island, although from the map it looks as though it’s connected by land. I suspect that because half the island is owned by the navy they don’t let you on certain parts of it, so most of the population has to drive over a long bridge to get there. Corinado has a nice white beach and a famous old hotel next to the beach where you can buy expensive drinks to sip while the sun goes down.
The third good point are the afore-mentioned sea cliffs along the top of which we cycled for an hour. The ocean stretches out to the horizon as the sun dips into it, highlighting the plethora of surfers bobbing about. Appropriately large-windowed houses line the road looking out to the sea but it’s still possible to get an unobstructed view from the road, something not so common in Sydney where property development usually triumphs over the casual visitor.
The final good point was the company and food. We had dinner with an old friend of Sarah’s from her time learning Spanish in Guatamala. Fidencio and his partner Lucia invited us for dinner at the OB Hotel where we had extremely tasty fish tacos (with the proper soft tacos, not that hard shell palaver).
Not even excellent fish tacos could redeem San Diego in my eyes, and given the importance I place on food that is a damning assessment. Adios USA, you have incredible natural scenery and some nice folk scattered around, but a week is about all I can handle.
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