This past weekend I went down to visit one of my best friends from college, Shannon, in San Diego. Flying out of San Francisco was awesome because you could see this amazing blanket of fog getting ready to just completely cover the city. It was a quick 1 hour flight, and I could see from the air that San Diego is a huge navy port - literally crawling with battleships.
It was supposed to be a quick relaxing weekend to just take a break from the daily grind here in San Francisco. It definitely did the trick. I flew down on Friday night, and Shanny and I preceded to get tipsy on very very large margaritas. San Diego, despite being so close to the border, is one of the most All-American looking cities I've ever been to. Very "white bread" and cookie cutter. The area we went out in definitel fit this description. The place we went to grab margaritas was full of abercrombie guys and blonde girls. Shocking!
After sleeping off the 'ritas, Saturday was spent getting sunburned at Coronado Beach with Shannon and her roommates, Sass and Jess. The beach was beautiful and the Pacific wasn't as cold as it is up in SF. Shanny and I took a really lovely walk to this area of the beach where you can let your dog run around. The dogs were so cute, but the beachgoers not so much. I later found out that San Diego was recently rated one of America's top 25 fattest cities by Men's Fitness magazine. Sorry to be negative, I'm just suprised because I expected nothing but models on my first trip to SoCal.
After another night of boozin' we decided to go for an adventure on Sunday and take a little trip south of the Border to Tijuana. There's a trolley that goes from San Diego down to where you can cross the border at San Ysidro. It took approximately 2 minutes to walking into Mexico. No immigration, no border controls, no nothing. Come one! Come all! Anyone can come into Mexico! Not too too much to see in Tijuana. There's one main street that all the tourists walk down that we pretty much stuck to called Avenida la Revolucion. Basically it's a street full of shops and restaurants and lots of people heckling you. We had a really great lunch, probably the most excellent Mexican food I've ever had (better be, considering...) and a very refreshingly cold beer on a blisteringly hot summer day.
After getting our fill of the town, we decided it was time to go and walk back to the US. It literally took two hours of standing outside in line waiting in the hot sun to get to the US immigration post. Horrible, all just to get our passports scanned. Pretty dumb considering as I've already mentioned it took two minutes to walk into Mexico. On a positive note, I really enjoyed our day in Tijuana. I just feel bad visiting super-touristy places where little kids are begging for money and trying to sell you little trinkets. I hate to think that their parents have no other choice but to have their maybe four or five year old children soliciting Americans on the side of the road. It just breaks my heart that I had to tell all those kids no, I can't give you anything. I can't buy a trinket from each kid, and I can't give each one of them my spare change. How do you pick?
Well, after two days almost entirely in the hot SoCal sun I was pretty beat. It was really so nice to see Shannon and meet her roommates in San Diego. Not my favorite city in the US, but it's always a pleasure seeing Shannon, no matter where we happen to be. I'm really glad that I got to see her before she moves at the end of the summer to Portland. It's always great to be able to associate places and people with the stories that our friends are telling. Crossing the border is also an experience that I am glad Shannon and I shared. Very fitting actually, since we met at a Jesuit university that preaches social justice. I wanted to go down to Tijuana to satisfy my own curiosity of the difficulties of crossing into the US - legally - and then having a better concept of just how impossibly difficult it must be to do it illegally. Pretty incredible.
After Shannon leaves San Diego, I'm not sure if I'll have any real reason to return to that city. I just wasn't too fond of the place, just a few people who happened to be living there at the time. But it was a really great to get away for the weekend, and even better to see Shanny. It's been 13 months since we were last together! Hope we don't go that long without seeing each other again. So next trip on the calandar is 4th of July in Portland with Lauren and Will. So excited, but even more excited to relax in SF for the next two weekends.
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