The Travel Begins...MSP to SAN

 January 28, 2024

Although most of the time I wish our three sons lived closer to us, having all of them near Minneapolis comes in very handy when we schedule flights out of MSP. Just as most of our travels begin, we drove the three hours the day before our flight and spent the night at our youngest son's home.

After a good night's sleep, I awoke before 6:00 am before the alarm went off. Our two grandsons were already up, cuddled together under a blanket watching TV in the living room. Our daughter-in-law uses an old fashioned electric percolator which is set up in the kitchen on a timer so the coffee was ready when I got downstairs. I checked my email and flight status while enjoying a cup of the hot coffee. Fortunately there were no unexpected changes to our flight other than a gate change.

After getting dressed, Bob and I made ourselves at home and fixed our usual breakfasts...oatmeal for him and eggs for me. The only difference was that my eggs were compliments of our son's chickens and had just been layed the previous day. I chose one brown egg and one blue egg.

After a recent cold snap, the last few days had brought warmer temps and dense fog advisories every morning. Visibility wasn't the worst I had seen, but I was concerned that the roads might be slick. The drive to MSP was about an hour from our son's house and he took a slight detour to show us the office building where he works.

Lines at MSP were not very long and it didn't take too long to get our bags checked and through security. The good news was that my bag was NOT overweight...close…but under 50 pounds. Bob made sure to tell the gal taking the bags that even though my bag was heavy I still had even more stuff in his bag. 

The flight was totally full, but I didn't hear any coughers sitting around us. I had a mask in my bag but hated the thought of putting it on. I had brought along a couple of slices of left over pizza (I love cold pizza!) which was my lunch during the flight. Bob had planned to pick up something at the airport to take on the plane but most of the food places were only serving breakfast and he was too cheap to pay $12 for a small premade sandwich. 

The flight went by quickly. The free WiFi (thanks T-Mobile!) was strong enough to watch YouTube videos and I also played some Spider Solitaire and caught up with Cruise Critic posts from our roll call. Bob loves movies so he was quite happy with the large selection provided by Delta. He had time to watch one complete movie and got part way through another before we landed.

Once we collected our bags, I checked pricing for both Uber and Lyft and Uber was slightly cheaper. Our hotel, the Best Western Yacht Harbor, was only about a mile from the airport but it cost almost $22 for the quick ride.

The "we are on vacation" selfie!

Signs made it easy to know where to stand for Uber pickup.

I was pleasantly surprised that our room was ready when we checked into the hotel at 12:45 pm. The room was small, but fine for the two nights we would be spending there. I liked the location of the Hampton Inn where we stayed in 2023, but we did NOT miss the noise from the trains running next to that hotel.

Best Western Yacht Harbor Hotel in San Diego

With Google's help, we found a Subway restaurant a little over a half mile away for a late lunch. Bob ordered a foot-long sub but asked the guy to cut it into 9" and 3" sections. 😄 Since I had eaten the pizza on the flight, the small portion was plenty for me. The weather was absolutely perfect so we ate outside. In just the short time since we arrived my mind was already trying to trick me into believing that it was summer time and not really January!

Our al fresco lunch

I was intrigued with the bird of paradise blooms

In my pre-trip research, I had found that the USS Recruit was near our hotel. I could see the "ship" from the restaurant so we walked over to check it out when we finished eating. The Recruit had been built in the late 1940's as a landlocked training ship. The 2/3 scale of a destroyer escort had been decommissioned and sat empty for over 20 years before being opened as a museum last year in 2023. I use the word "museum" loosely because it was really just a single room with photos on display.

U.S. Recruit...a landlocked training ship from the 1940's.

Nearby was a foot bridge crossing over the harbor. We wandered over and looked across the water just in time to see two guys jump from the north harbor bridge doing a back flip into the water below. Once they were out of the water, they came up on the foot bridge and announced they were going to jump one more time from there...and they did. Only this time as they hit the water a large police boat arrived with lights flashing. With a loud speaker they were instructed to "GET IN THE BOAT!" The boat sailed off with the officers writing what appeared to be a citation for the two daredevils. 

Jump #1

Jump #2

In Bob's words...."those guys are in deep doo-doo".

Later, by the time we were ready for dinner, I was more tired than hungry. A nearby Denny's seemed the easiest and quickest. Certainly not the best food in San Diego but a pleasant meal overall with a very friendly server. Unfortunately as we were walking the couple of blocks to the restaurant something "popped" in my left knee and I was left hobbling. Ouch!

The two hour time difference and long travel day caught up with us so after eating we went back to the hotel (a painful walk for me...) and settled in for the night.