Sunny California: San Diego, Day One

Last week we spent four days
in San Diego, CA celebrating
Michael's 45th birthday. We lived in
San Diego for 3 years while Michael
was going to Law School at University
of San Diego, so we did a bit of reminiscing.
We spent the first of our 3 full days driving
around our old neighborhoods and
visiting USD.



The weather was beautiful... and after the first day,
we didn't even have to deal with the coastal San Diego
"burnoff".

First, we had breakfast at our hotel: The Pink Lady of La Jolla
(as Michael calls it) the La Valencia. It is a very old hotel.
The first room they took us to was a suite, but it was in the
oldest part of the hotel and the hallways smelled musty.
The room was dated (although very large) and the bedroom
had no view... I'm not even sure if it had a window actually
and that was the whole point of staying in a hotel across from
La Jolla Cove... the view! So, I asked to be moved to a newer
room and boy am I glad I asked... we were taken to a villa
room right across from the ocean with our own patio and
our own BUTLER! Crazy. The room was smaller, but much
newer and the bathroom was awesomely huge with a steam
shower that was to die for.

The above picture is not taken from our patio,
but from the restaurant way above our room
(the La Jolla Cove, although hard to see,
is down below in the background)

The first stop on our memory tour was our first
apartment together in San Diego. Michael started Law
School after returning to the States from Kyoto, Japan.
He lived in Portland for about 8 months and worked for
a Japanese subsidiary of Kyocera in Vancouver , WA. I was
still trying to finish off my undergraduate degree, so Michael
moved down to San Diego alone to start Law School--just a little
over 20 years ago. His first apartment (that he picked out
himself with the help of his parents) was hideous. I hated
it. I graduated from PSU in December 1988 and took one
look at the apartment and immediately started shopping
around for a new place to live (the apartment was not even worthy
of a picture although we did drive by it). We stayed in the Hillcrest
Neighborhood of San Diego because it is really cool.

I chose this 3 bedroom walk up (above) as our
new home. I LOVED it. It had coved ceilings
and hard wood floors. We had a guest room
and an office for Michael to do all his studying.
(The place looks exactly the same!)

Below is the market located just one block
from our apartment. I love neighborhood markets
and this one is still there and it hasn't changed either.
Next stop was the final apartment we lived
in. We ended up moving from Hillcrest to the
La Jolla UTC area to be closer to my work. I
switched jobs from the Marriott Marina (downtown)
to a job at UCSD (in La Jolla). Michael was still
about the same distance from school, but this new
place was very close to my work and since we only had
one car--it worked. The apartment (La Jolla del Sol)
was nothing special and now it has a security gate, so we
didn't venture inside the complex. We lived here for such
a short period of time (maybe 9 months) that I barely
remembered where it was.


We also spent some time that day at the USD campus
where Michael attended Law School. It is
certainly a beautiful campus, however, Michael's
time there was stressful and mainly full of difficult
classes and more difficult tests and a lot of studying,
so the memories are also a bit stressful.... I never
spent much time at the school at all.Michael actually spent some time in the rental
car on a weekly sales meeting teleconference, so I
ventured out and took some photos.This is the door of the Law School
Building where Michael took his last final exam.
I was 5 months pregnant with Joey, the movers
had picked up all our stuff, and I had the car
packed and ready to go... and waiting outside this door
for Michael. I didn't waste any
time getting back to Portland...

where we left school behind and entered
the world of real jobs and babies.

Back in San Diego... we could not return to the
hotel without visiting Michael's favorite
Mexican "dive" Nico's Taco's just a short
drive down the hill from USD.

So, we have aged over 17 years since our last
Nico's experience and I have to say... the food was good,
but did not sit quite as well in our old tummies as it
did in 1991.