SAN DIEGO - Part 1 - LITTLE ITALY........
          Right now I am pretty much grounded - because it is in-between weather, and because my house is a, literally, disaster area.  The walls are being prepped for a re-do, everything is everywhere, can't find anything, you know the scenario.  So not is everything a mess, life is boring, and I am not used to boring as I seem to go from one adventure to another.

          And so, for the next few days, will tell you about San Diego.  During the Monster Snow Storms in February of 2010, my friend Vicki and I flew to San Diego, just our first stop before cruising to Hawaii and back.  But that will be another story. 

          I AM NOT a city person.  I grew up in a rural area, and have lived in the country since my early 20's. (not THE early 20's!!!). I really don't know how people cope with city life.  But if I HAD to choose a city to live in, as of right now it would be San Diego California.

          We had four days in San Diego before the other two of our group could join us for the Hawaii adventure - they had to work, we were retired.

We stayed in the Little Italy section of San Diego, at the Harborview Inn, just a couple of blocks from the waterfront.  This first picture is what we saw every morning when we left our hotel to go exploring.  We had found a Starbucks a couple of blocks away, that was our first stop every morning, sitting outside and drinking our coffee. 

As we drank we watched the people coming and going, and talked to the dog walkers.  San Diego is a completely friendly dog-city, everywhere we walked there were bowls of fresh water sitting on the sidewalks outside of the businesses for the dogs to drink while on their walks.  This particular dog was carrying a rock.  His owner told us every morning when they left for their walk, he had to pick up his rock and carry it with him.  He would drop it to drink, then pick it up again.  Only in San Diego.

Another thing we noticed were the murals.  They were everywhere, on buildings, signs, what-ever.  I guess San Diego is famous for their murals, but they were beautiful, as you can see.

Everywhere we walked there was something neat to see.  We visited the farmer's market, walked the waterfront - another chapter, ate, really good Italian food, and ate and ate.  Good thing we did a lot of walking.

We were also fortunate as they were having their Italian Festival when we were there.  On Saturday evening it was like Mardi Gras.  There was music everywhere, singers, bands, individuals playing their what-evers.  People were dressed in their Mardi Gras finery, it was really a great experience.  The next three pictures are of one of the revelers, one of  the couple on stilts dancing down the street and one of the "Party Dog".

There will be several more chapters of this particular adventure, the Waterfront, Old Towne, Balboa Park, and possibly some miscellaneous stuff. 

I hope you enjoy your thumb-nail participation in some of my adventures.  I wold love to have e-mails - marthadou@hughes.net, or comments on the blog so I know whether or not I am boring you.

I hope you have the opportunity to have as many fund adventures as I have had over the years, and hopefully I will have many more.

Everyone have a wonderful day and God Bless.