san diego - old town, balboa park, border beach!

so the next day, after finishing Srs Biznz, i went to the oldest parts of san diego to run around and see stuffs. first stop was old town, which bills itself as the birthplace of not just san diego but all of california. it's kinda neat if you like knickknack shops and 150 year old buildings, but it's actually quite small -- really just this one town center plus a small stretch of street.

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all around that central grassy area are old west-looking shops and whatnot. the white maypole-looking thing is actually a flag pole that's been wrapped in ribbons. no idea why. a bunch of kids were there on a school trip, and were tearing around yelling. a hundred fifty years ago, they woulda had to go here:

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-- reputed the first schoolroom in san diego :]

also there was the first wells fargo bank and a cigar shop or something:

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though mostly i was trying to take a pic of that big old tree there. beautiful :] i'm not sure what it is. i wanted to say oak, but then i generally think any large broad roundleafed tree is an oak *LOL*

after old town, i went over to balboa park, which is probably the cultural center of san diego (although the symphony etc are more downtown). this is really close to the zoo, but i didn't get a chance to go to the zoo this time :[

to get to balboa, you generally park across this big canyon that the highway 163 runs through and then walk across the bridge. this stretch of highway is one of the most beautiful in san diego, esp with balboa park's bridge arcing gracefully overhead, but alas i couldn't get a pic. road too winding, didn't wanna crash!

this is what the bridge looks like looking toward balboa park. the tower in the distance is pretty much where balboa park begins:

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balboa park's renowned for its old-looking spanish architecture (though really everything was built in the early 1900s) and its gardens. it has a lot of museums too, but in all honesty they're not that great. as you're walking toward the bridge, you see the first of those many gardens to your left:

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on the bridge itself, you can look down over the 163. no barriers on this bridge, man! apparently san diegans don't suicide very often.

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looking the other way, westward, you can see downtown san diego. SD's a small city; not a very impressive skyline :] very beautiful at night from coronado, though -- but i didn't have a chance to go there this time.

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it was hella stormy in san diego, by the way. actually it was rainy/stormy EVERYWHERE when i went down. february's one of our wettest months in california. while i was running around balboa, a huge storm blew in off the ocean. you can see it coming in the pics here.

eventually i got to the gate:

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i forget what this building actually is. it almost looks like a mosque, but i think it's some sort of museum. maybe san diego history? i really can't remember. here's a better look at the gorgeous detail on the facade:

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just behind that mosquey thing is san diego's old globe theatre, reputedly based on shakespeare's old globe theatre:

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looking back, the sky was getting doomier by the second.

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this is another shot of the mosquey building from the backish side, across a lawn. i love this juxtaposition: the really bright red modern art thing, the dome and spire, and the grey sky:

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if you walk in farther, you eventually get to this sorta central fountain in balboa park:

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you can see a tourist trolleybus to the left :] behind the fountain is one of the world's largest outdoor organs. i have another, better pic of it later when i come out the other way. also in that central fountain area is the museum of art:

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there are also several paths branching off from that point, leading to various gardens, nature walks, international cottages, and the like. i didn't have time to see them, though :[

past that fountain, balboa park becomes pedestrian only. continuing onward down the main path of balboa park, you pass into this arcade:

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it's a lot nicer than the one that stretched between the mosque thing and the fountain. i didn't bother -- okay no, i took a pic of that first one, but i didn't bother showing it *LOL*

this is the visitor's center:

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NGL, all the lush greenery, the tropical-storm-looking sky, and the spanish architecture totally made me think of hilaran *LOL* i had such geeky urges to play scenes while i was at balboa park.

a little farther, and you get to the botanical gardens. pretty much all of these sit at various locations down the central drive of balboa park. there are lots of koi in that reflecting pool:

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here's what it looks like inside. this is looking from one of the ends toward the center. what looked like a fairly solid structure outside is actually completely open-to-air on the inside:

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and these are flowers. though kai would call it "a" flower.

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coming out of the botanical house, looking the other way, you can see gardens through the arcade:

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...also, a japanese schoolgirl tour group. later on i ran into their male counterparts *LOL*

i left the main road for a bit and wandered through the various buildings and gardens on the side. i eventually went into one with a central atrium and courtyard:

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and yes. that absolutely and completely made me think of hilary-in-mexico, and i desperately wanted to RP *LOL*

eventually i got to the end of the main drive, which terminates in this plaza a few steps up from the street. the natural history museum is to the left and the science center is to the right in this next pic. neither building was remarkable, so i didn't post pictures. there's another fountain there, a little more modernistic than the central one:

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and lo and behold! the japanese schoolboys were found.

looking back, you can see the main gate way in the distance:

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behind the fountain is a bridge across a wide (but oddly empty!) boulevard, and then a desert garden:

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i think this actually connects to the desert garden part of the SD Zoo, so if you're a member you can just enter this way. i'm not sure, though. it was big -- i just took a pic at the very top of the area and then went back.

i meant to take a walk through the various gardens on the way back, but the storm finally broke and it started to rain. i just snapped a few pics along the way. it's still pretty astonishing what a wide range of gardens there are, though. the very first one outside the gates was vaguely asian-influenced; then there was the desert garden. there was also this patch of almost-wild forest:

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and just a few steps later, a french-style hedge row:

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passing the organ pavilion, i stopped just long enough to grab this picture. it was really coming down by then! i wanted to get closer so i could get a pic of the scale of the thing, but i was getting drenched :[

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and here's the main gate again. by this point i was FLEEING THE RAIN.

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...but i still stopped long enough to grab this pic of a flowering tree in the rain :]

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after i left balboa park, i briefly entertained the idea of going to tijuana. however, i realized i didn't have my passport with me, so i just drove all the way south to the border and turned back. it was pretty interesting; traffic dropped off precipitously as you got closer to the international border. by the last mile, the freeway was almost empty. when i got off at the very last exit, i think of all the cars in this pic, only one continued on:

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i saw on my gps that there was a state beach at the very border, though, and decided to go there. after driving through successively more barren country roads...

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...i eventually had to park at a gate and start walking. google map lied to me! the road was blocked about 2 miles from the beach! so it was dirt road from there on out:

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the landscape was really interesting. most of san diego is all mesas and canyons. as you neared this beach, though, it really flattened out into this coastal plain. that picture above looks like something out of y tu mama tambien *LOL*

finally, after a whole lotta walking, i ascended a little hill and ended up on a beach. this beach was nothing like the one in la jolla. it felt pretty wild. there were nesting terns and other waterbirds everywhere, and not a single other human to be seen. the stormy weather made the ocean slate-grey, the foam white. it was freezing cold.

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i took a series of pictures in a 180-degree arc, and then just roughly slapped them together into a panorama. in google's infinite wisdom, i'm apparently not allowed to have a 5000-px wide picture, so it SHRUNK IT for me >_< but. yeah. it was pretty awesome.

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it really felt like i was standing at the end of the world. on the left side of the picture you can literally look across the border. the cliffs in the distance are in tijuana. other than that sign of life -- which curiously felt very far away because my passport-less ass couldn't get there -- i couldn't see any other mark of human habitation.

so i felt compelled to leave my own human trace:

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-- though i deliberately left it close to the waves, so that the high tide would wash it away. it felt right that that beach stay abandoned and empty.

on the way back, it was getting dark. i found wildflowers :]

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