San Diego Trip: Part One

OK, so, its been a long couple of days, but it is far from done. We drove down here to San Diego last night. Leaving SLO at 4:30, with a dinner in between, we got to Mary’s friends apartment at 10:30. Luckily, we didn’t hit too much traffic. Sahoko, Mary and I spent the night on a pull out couch. We woke up at 7 am to shower and get ready to visit the first firm. We went to KTU+A where they gave us a breakfast of fresh bagels, spread, juice and fruit. We visited with the Principals and met up with some Alumni. At a firm of 34 people, they had 21 people from Cal Poly. No….they don’t have favoritism, not at all. Cough….cough…. We then left to go to lunch. Since our friend Logan always talkes about a burrito place in San Diego, we decided to make him jealous that he is halfway arounf the world. The burritos, I must say, were delicious. They were cheap too. 3.60 for your while luch is not half bad. We then went to a firm called Burton Studio in Solana Beach. The frim was a little trendy for me, but I was very excited about their 29 inch monitors for each work station. They also had a whole wall in their retrofitted warehouse full of books of design in any field. We left early to bring Sahoko to downtown, so that she could interview for an intership at the San diego branch of EDAW. While she was in their, Mary and I walked downtown to the embarcadero, where we saw both an old sail boat, with 3 masts and a large cruise liner about to disembark. Eventually, Mary and I found our way to Little Italy where there were many different small restaurants and we found ourselves by the Blick Studio store, where I purchased some large tubes of paint at a ¼ of the price as they would have been in SLO. We then met up with Sahoko. As we were supposed to then go to the Fort Rosecrans National Cematary, we headed towards the peninsula. We never actually met up with the rest of our group there, but we did explore the cemetray. There was a computerized system of finding the graves, so I was curious to see if there were any family members buried there. I actually found one. A Carl Minkkinen was buried there with his wife Doris. I took some pictures and was rather happy that my relative’s grave has such a nice view above the sea. When we left the memorial, we finally got cell phone reception and met up with the SCASLA group. We went to Old Town, the first settlement in California for dinner where we ate at a Mexican Cantina built in 1827. It was very good food, even though I only got a salad, I nibbled everyone else’s. After dinner, our car went back to mary’s friends apartment, then brought Sahoko to the train station so she can go see her brother. We then went downtown to walk around and see the place. Mary and her old friends ate dinner at a Tiki Restaurant, I had water…ehh, I wasn’t hungry. We then bought brownie mix and I am going to sit and start my reading before the brownies are done, and I go to bed, as it is already 10 pm and we all have a long day tomorrow. Yay, San Diego Zoo.