Things I have learned in San Diego:

I do not like eating around other people at breakfast. My distaste for this, however, is definitely put aside for a free breakfast.

It's amazing how quickly you can adapt to a not-too-bad hotel bed when you take a dose of NyQuil every night.

What do you mean you haven't bothered to try out the Gaslamp Quarter for dinner? A ten-minute walk is perfect for getting the kinks out after listening to legal stuff for eight hours.

I finished High Lord's Fury. I think it may have suffered from some of the problems of any finale of a best-beloved series, which is to say that I had a lot f

I love to walk in Californian cities. Love it. I will walk for goodly amounts of time, in the dark, (mostly) regardless of the quality of neighborhood. But in Washington? Hate it. I would really like to know what's up with that. It's probably got something to do with the lack of urban areas that I can easily get to.

I either should have been a lawyer, or it's a good thing for everyone that I'm not. For some G-d-only-knows reason, I don't rules lawyer, except in real life. Give me actual laws to lawyer with, and I will gleefully split legal hairs. I think this was not necessarily appreciated by my fellow students or teachers. Heh. Maybe someday... Or maybe I'll just go to a religious school when I retire and learn to split hairs in rabbinical law.

(BTW, I did fairly well on my law exam.)

The San Diego zoo is both very large and very small at the same time. I was able to see most everything that I wanted to see in one day, but by the end of the day, I was absolutely freaking exhausted. I missed the group leaving at the beginning of the day, but caught up with them midway through, at the giraffes. So for the first half of the day, I was on my own and making good time. I got to the zoo around ten, which was about two hours or so before most of the parents with mobile children showed up. There was no line to see the gorgeous pandas, just a bunch of people, so I stared for as long as I wanted to. (Which wasn't really all that long.) And there were maybe that many people around the polar bears, so I got to see them for longer. (There's only so long that you can watch sleeping polar bears. But at least they were out.)

The ones I can watch forever are the otters. I completely (sadly) missed the exhibit with the monkeys and the otters in the same habitat, but in the children's zoo, we did get to see one completely hyperactive otter. In the water!, zoom around!, out of the water!, check out the sleeping habitat!, in the water!, zoom around!, etc., etc. I loved that. I can watch otters forever.

We all saw the sea lion show, which was bloody fantastic. It wasn't just sea lions, it was parrots, a gorgeous owl, four incredibly well-trained parrots, and a timberwolf and his packmate, an Irish setter-like dog, who had been a shelter rescuee. The two sea lions were impressive. I'd only really seen them at pier 54 in San Francisco, snoozing and fighting and being really loud out there. But in this setting, I could really see their power and strength. It was impressive. Wow.

The zoo was Saturday. Today, I went to the Maritime Museum of San Diego. Which isn't a building at all. It's a ferry, a steam-powered yacht, two submarines, two tall ships, and some other ships. Fantastic! For a little extra, you get a trip around the bay on a pilot boat from 1914. It's kind of cold out here! (I say kind of because it's cold for California, and especially for SoCal, but if I say it's cold, all of you who are north of here will want to hit me.) The tour was very simple. but really, that's about what I wanted from an overall tour. And it's just neat to be on a really old boat.

The highlight for me was the HMS Surprise and the Star of India. Star was a business ship that originally was an exporter on the London-India run, then hauled emigrants from England to Australia and New Zealand, and then worked the Alaska-California cannery runs. After the Surprise and the two submarines, Star was incredibly spacious. The back of the top deck and the first level of belowdecks are partially restored and are museum spaces. Below is especially for the history of the age of sail and sailing in general. It's just lovely.

The HMS Surprise was the Rose, which Fox bought to turn into HMS Surprise for Master and Commander, which one of my favorite movies. The Museum has definitely realized that it has a movie draw, and though there's nothing specific about it on the outside, belowdecks, they definitely talk about the movie, Nelson, and the British Navy of the Napoleonic era. Plus, the guy who played the Master-at-Arms works for the Museum, and was dressed as a pirate and giving a tour. It was lovely.

So this weekend, a definite plus. I'd love to come down here with wanderingfey. Next weekend, I'm hoping to go to the Scripps Aquarium and hit a couple of the museums in Balboa Park. Fun!