Gates' Updates!: Visitors!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Visitors!

Our most recent visitors were here to celebrate Gray's birthday. We picked up Mom and Claire from the airport a few days before his big day. Gray was so excited about them coming he passed out on the way to the airport. :)

Claire and Gray on St. Patrick's Day in San Diego!

We went to Lucha Libre for lunch, which was pretty tasty. I saw it on Man VS Food about a week before Mom got here. It is super close to the airport and they got here around lunch time, so that was our first stop. I think the best description of the place would be fresh Mexican fare hosed down with luchador. The portions were pretty epic, but the prices were pretty reasonable. I'm going to take Josh down there sometime soon. I think he will dig it.

Excuse the cell phone pics. I was trying to take pics on the DL.

Every decoration (even the TV was on luchador wrestling) was about luchadores.
Pretty impressive.

We drove down the coast from LaJolla to Ocean Beach that afternoon. I thought they would enjoy the view from Mt. Soledad. That wasn't really an option because it was the foggiest/cloudiest day ever, so the visibility was pretty terrible. After that we stopped by to see the seals and sea lions in LaJolla. I wanted to see Sunset Cliffs (we walked right past them during the 3Day, but it was raining like crazy, so I didn't even notice them), so we headed South. We ended up in Ocean Beach. Claire got sick, so the tour was over for the day. We took the kids home to rest and play.

The next day we went down to Old Town and to Miramar for some grocery shopping. It was very glamorous.

Gray, his balloon, and Maam.

Gray's birthday party was Saturday. It was super fun and Gray got lots of gifts. A post will follow this one with more birthday details.

Our whale watching tour got cancelled Sunday because of gale force winds, so we went to two wineries that are within 15 or 20 miles of home. I drive past Orfila every time we got to the Wild Animal Park, so I wanted to check it out. It was fairly small but the tour was informative and I won a free wine tasting for two by correctly answering a question at the end!

Maam during the tour.

That's a lot of wine...

Then we were off to the Bernardo Winery (which had no grape vines). They had a tasting room, but it was mostly shops. We did find this room, which I believe must have been used a long time ago.

Just before taking them back to the airport, we stopped at Balboa Park to see the Museum of Man.

Claire and Gray at Balboa Park.

The Museum of Man was not as cool as I thought it was going to be. It had the potential to be the coolest museum ever, but I think it fell way short of that mark. They dedicated a large portion of the museum to evolution. Without getting into a religious discussion, I wasn't into it.

The Egyptian part of the museum was the most interesting, but could have been SO much better. In my opinion, the museum was very bare, and there was so much space wasted that could have been filled with interesting/interactive exhibits. It was a huge let down for me, but maybe my expectations were too high going in to the museum.

The extend of Native American info was in this tiny case.

One of the most excellent exhibits. C3P0!

We rushed over to Hash House A Go Go for a quick lunch. The food here is so tasty, the portions are HUGE, and the prices are reasonable. I recommend you try it if you are ever in San Diego.