San Diego On The Cheap

Ok, Here's the first real post.

The last several days I've been over in San Diego for my father's heart surgery, a cardiac ablation to fix his heart murmur. Happily, dad is home safe and doing noticeably better already, much to our relief. The fun part of the trip was, I got to amuse myself for 2 days in San Diego with no schedule but my own whims (for the most part). The downside is, I had a bare minimum of money on which to do it. Here's how I managed, and what I learned.

Food: Honestly, I didn't pack very well for this trip, in terms of nutrition. For drinkables, I brought water and some sodas from home. For food, I stopped at a roadside farmers market place that I know well, and stocked up on fruit. Bananas, strawberries, oranges, peaches...delicious and easy, but not real good in terms of keeping me full. To fill out my diet on the cheap, I had the Hostel's pancake breakfast every day with peanut butter, and coffee (I am NOT forgoing my caffeine fix!), and got a couple dollar menu burgers at local drive-thru's. Not the best diet, I know, but it could have been worse, too. Solidly 70% of my diet for all 3 days was fresh fruit, with enough carbs and protein to keep my blood sugar stable. I ended up drinking only one of the sodas, and that was on the way home, for the caffeine.
Lesson Learned: Pack bread and sandwich fixin's and some plastic silverware...and some teabags would have made a nice change of pace from water.

Lodging: OK, hotels are expensive. Even Motel 6 can run $60 a night or more, which adds up FAST. So I started looking around, and found that Hostelling International has a hostel at 5th & Market streets, at the southeast end of the Gaslamp District. I paid about $26 a night for 3 nights. Despite the rather dubious-looking front lobby, the rooms and beds were very clean and comfortable, and the staff were genuinely nice young ladies & gentlemen ~s~ The showers were clean and had superb hot water and water pressure. Included in the nightly rent is a "Free all-you-can-cook" pancake breakfast every morning. They also have a tv/internet room, local tours, activities on certain days of the week, and a place to wash your laundry. Now, to get a cheaper rate, I stayed in a 10 bed Co-Ed dorm room. Sharing a room with a few well behaved guys doesn't bother me at all. However, they do have all female and all male rooms, too. Security measures included a slide-card locking system for the entrance AND the door to your own dorm (couldn't get into anyone else's, only your assigned room), plus a guard outside the door at night to check for your room pass. No pass, no entry. Period. Depending on your vices, you may like to know that the entry door is (I kid you not!) between a Sushi restaurant and a Cigar store, and right near any number of pizzarias, bars, nightclubs, upscale restaurants, and upscale fashion stores for shopping.

Entertainment: With dad in the hospital, I had all of Monday and Tuesday to fill up. Balboa Park is a great place to amuse yourself for a few hours if you're flat broke, but it REALLY helps if you've got some spending money. Next time, I intend to buy their museum pass for a little less than $40, which lets you into all the museums for an entire week for that one fee. This time, however, I got to content myself wandering through the Spanish Art Village marketplace, the Temken art museum, the botanical building, and around the various gardens (all free!) with my camera. Two perks of Balboa Park include LOTS of places to park all day for free, and you can bring your own food to eat.

I did spend the $30 each, for me and dad to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. For a couple of history-loving bibliophiles, the chance to see so many ancient books was WONDERFUL!!! Not only were there a bunch of the dead sea scrolls, but also a bunch of other books dating as early as the 1100's, and even a Roman Codex. One other interesting part of the exhibit were original hand-done art & calligraphy pages from the Saint John's Bible (google it), which were just beautiful. And did you know, there is now a Dead Sea Scrolls bible. Check it out :-)
Incidentally I was VERY blessed to find some lovely clumps of Aloe Vera growing in a back corner of the park, to treat the sunburn I acquired.
Lesson learned: Two days is a LOT of time to fill when the museums are off limits! Yes it was worth splurging to see the ancient scroll fragments and books, but only once.

Parking: Three words.........ouch. ouch! OUCH!!!!!! Parking is EXPENSIVE!!!! Normal night parking in a garage is fairly reasonable ($6-8), UNLESS you need to park on a Game Day. On Game Days, you can expect to pay double and even triple to get a parking spot, whether you give two hoots about sports or not. No, parking on the street at a meter all night wasn't an option, thanks to street sweepers. Parking in their way was a fa$t track to get towed away! :-( Lesson learned: look up the local-team game schedule before you leave home, and plan your parking budget around it. Most garages in that area seem to start their "Night" rates at 6 PM, but beware! The hourly rate usually kicks in starting at 3 AM!

On the other hand, for actual driving, traffic wasn't terrible at all, I just had to figure my way around with all the one-way streets. There's a LOT of those in the old section of San Diego, so a map that indicates them is a valuable investment.

DO take and apply sunblock, and beware of cloudy/hazy days, because you can get a MUCH worse sunburn then. And a light shirt with long sleeves is better than no sleeves, if one is as prone to sunburn as I am. Oh yes, and DO bring or buy your own drinking water, as the City water is NAS-TEE!!

Peace out!