Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

I had walked up to Balboa Park using the Google directions, and that sent me past a community college AND a big high school, at about 3:30 in the afternoon. Just as I was starting to hate all teenagers, and thinking that we should really do as the Brits do (the ones that can afford it anyway), and send all our kids away for most of adolescence (to boarding school), I had to cross a driveway and the kid who was driving out it stopped and backed up to let me pass, and even smiled at me.

Wall I went past - ghosts of grafitti - or paint ball?

On the way back, I went closer to the Harbor, down 5th St., closer to where we’d stayed in Little Italy the last time we were in San Diego in 2003, and I liked that a lot better. I think generally, I like San Diego better farther up the hill, away from the tourist-y, New Orleans Bourbon St.-like Gaslamp district.

I managed to make it to the 4:30 showing of The Fighter – the acting is great, they’ll all get academy awards, but I’m not a boxing fan, so the fight scenes were hard to watch, plus it’s really about how awful people are in families, and that was even harder to watch.

I met Martin & Suzanne for dinner at Operacaffe. We shared bread & balsamic vinegar and oil, and a mushroom salad and some bruschetta. I had these Asiago gnocchi that were really fluffy.

On Tuesday I had time before my flight, so I decided to try to find what I had thought was a bigger Starbucks when I saw it on the walk down the hill the day before. More power to Starbucks for creating all these spaces where people can hang out, but the Starbucks closest to our hotel, in the Gaslamp, had a slightly smelly clientele, who obviously spent long hours there. The up-the-hill Starbucks turned out not to be bigger, in fact, it had no seating at all. The customers were all on their way to work, and the staff had definitely been taking happy pills – the guy who waited on me almost cheered when he saw me haul out my own to-go mug. I ordered a chocolate croissant, and he said, “oh do you want that heated? They’re really good that way!” I walked a little further down the hill, and came across the hotel where Suzanne was staying, in a converted bank. I sat in their lobby – a nice lobby indeed, with high ceilings and columns because it used to be a bank – and ate my croissant and drank my coffee and read my vampire book on my iPhone. So I guess I did find that more upscale experience I was seeking.