San Diego

We used another one of our Christmas presents this weekend - this one a present to ourselves. We decided to go down to San Diego for the weekend. It was supposed to be a flashback to taking little trips like we did in the Czech Republic. To help in that regard we decided to take the train down. It's actually quite a nice train ride - one of Amtrak's few on-time trains on the west coast. It runs right along the coast line through southern Orange County and into northern San Diego County. In many spots, you're just feet from the ocean, giving it a spectacular view. This was especially true on the ride home, when we were traveling past the sea right at sunset.

We stayed on Coronado Island, at a little hotel Chelsey's family has stayed at before. It was a beautiful weekend, so Saturday we rented bikes and rode a long way down the Silver Strand. It was a nice, relaxing ride and we saw some really big rabbits. We also had a picnic on the waterfront overlooking San Diego Bay and downtown San Diego. I think there were four separate wedding parties and what looked to be a quinceañera that came by the spot to have photos taken during our lunch. (No, Chelsey wasn't the one taking their photos). Sunday we walked across Coronado and through the Hotel del Coronado, a big fancy 19th-century place.
Saturday night we made use of the public transportation system to find El Indio Mexican Restaurant, courtesy of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. We got the taquitos and a chile relleno, just like the book recommended. It was pretty good. I even bought a bag of their "world-famous" chips to bring home, although I haven't broken into them yet.
Anyways, it was a good weekend. Hopefully we'll find the time to do some more little trips in the near future...of course, everything in the future is tentative at the moment anyways.
-Jason
I used some of my new camera equipment -- the tripod and the remote. I told Jason that I was equipped to take "self-pictures" to a whole new level. I'm very lucky that Jason is a patient guy because we had several photo shoots over the weekend. I liked being able to compose the picture I wanted of us and not have to rely on somebody else to take it. Plus, it was perfect for the sunset pictures. I put them all up on the picasa site. Enjoy.