A Trip to San Diego

This week I had the opportunity to go to San Diego for a conference for work. I've been to San Diego several times now and have visited the main attractions like Sea World, The San Diego Zoo and Legoland so this time I thought I'd go down a day early and check out some of the attractions I haven't seen. First up was the Maritime Museum. They have one of the oldest tall ships in the world and it still floats. This one has a metal haul and was just as cramped as I expected. They also had two submarines, one Russian and one American. Those were super cramped.

After the Maritime Museum I went to the Air and Space museum. I was very naive in my knowledge of this area. Apparently the area is called Balboa park and there are actually 16 different museums as well as many other attractions including the San Diego Zoo. I checked out the Air and Space Museum as well as the Auto Museum. Both were quite impressive with a mix of original and replica planes and vehicles. If I had know there was so much to see I would have set aside more time and checked out the all museum pass. I guess I have a reason to go in the future.

The conference I was seeing was for a company called ESRI which makes software for creating maps. There were over 18,000 people attending. Not the biggest conference I've been too but still impressive. The San Diego conference centre is very nice with plenty of room and it's right down by the water so there are great views of the harbour which includes many military ships. There was also a 'Dole' ship. It never occurred to me that they would have their own ships but I guess they have a lot of pineapples and bananas to ship around the world.

On the last night of the conference there wasn't much going on so I went down to PetCo Park to see a baseball game. We got a 20% discount on tickets and the cheapest seats were just $21 or $17 with the discount. As I sat down I realized that I don't think I've ever seen a major league baseball game in person. The park is pretty new and despite it's size was nestled nicely inside the downtown core. You could walk by it in the morning and see the field from the street. The seats were great because they all pointed right at home plate. San Diego lost but it was still a fun experience. San Diego continues to be one of my favourite destinations.