We went to the San Diego Zoo today, and walked around Balboa Park a bit. The zoo was both delightful and disappointing. Many of the exhibits were really outstanding - the habitats for bonobos and gorillas in particular. But I was surprised how many of the exhibits were depressing. I know animals in zoos don’t have much to do, but they were all just sitting there. I think the most excited ones were the birds, just hopping around in their little cages without much going on in their heads. The hippos were bored, and so were the tigers, although I think actually we just happened to catch the tigers at lunchtime. We got to see a really funny looking pig eating his piggy chow, and of course we saw the meerkats rolling around in their rascally way, though we had to walk quite a ways to get to them. I think my favorite part was the clouded leopard. When we got there, a keeper had the young leopard on his lap and was petting him the way you’d pet any cat. Eventually kitty got bored and hopped down, and then rolled around on the ground and marked things just like a housecat! He may have been a very expensive and exotic cat, but he was a cat just the same. The zoo settings were just gorgeous. The whole place is wooded, and it’s basically on a hillside so there is a lot of opportunity to go up and down to various levels of the park.

But what really amazed me was that as huge as the zoo was, it was less than a quarter of the size of Balboa Park as a whole. We wandered around in the park a bit, including taking a ride on the little railroad that A remembers from over 20 years ago. She went into lots of museum shops, which I wasn’t interested in because I always feel clumsy in them and I worry about breaking stuff. We had a snow-cone thing, and just sat in the sun and enjoyed watching all the other people enjoying the park. There were several buskers and it was just a really perfect day. Of course, then we had a two-hour drive to Los Angeles ahead of us, but that was okay. We were tired from walking all day plus cramped from sitting in the car, so we have been sitting around staring at each other since we arrived. Tomorrow I plan to wake up, drive A to her training, and come back to shower and get ready for the day. I’m going to meet a friend at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, and we are also going to visit the Queen Mary.

Too tired to upload today’s photos and videos - I got clouded leopard and meerkat videos! This hotel’s wireless connection is superb though, so I’ll be uploading everything sometime tomorrow.

We spent today at Sea World! We drove down from Anaheim in the morning and went straight to Sea World. We saw the dolphin show, the sea lion and otter show, the pets show, and the orca show. I was actually rather underwhelmed by the orca show…they make such a big deal out of it, and it’s cool that they fit four of them into one tank, but they didn’t even do very much. The dolphins, which we saw earlier in the day, were much more impressive. I couldn’t help feel a little unsettled during the marine mammal shows, though, because I know they are smart animals and keeping them in captivity isn’t the best thing for them. Neither is doing tricks over and over. But I really liked the pets show, which starred mostly dogs, several cats, two pigs, and a few ducks. Most of those animals - especially the dogs - are happy doing that kind of thing. They are domesticated anyway, and they live for the chance to play around. There was at least one cat who declined to do what it was supposed to, which was entertaining. They had the dogs come around at the end of the show, and because I asked for it, they brought out a cat as well! We wanted to go on the “Journey to Atlantis” roller coaster but it turned out to have a flume element, and it was too cool for that, so we ruled it out. We did end up on the “Wild Arctic” simulator, which was pretty lame and hokey, but it was still amusing for a few minutes.

Right now my network connection is not too good…again. It’s better than in Anaheim, where it didn’t work at all one night and then worked poorly the next night (and cost $10!), but it’s still really slow. I hope the HoJo in El Segundo will be better. I’m trying to upload pictures from today but I’m having a tough time of it…I may not get all of them up there tonight, we’ll see. Also, I am sunburned! Whoops…not enough shade at Sea World, and I forgot that it’s possibly to get a sunburn in January. Welcome to California, I guess! Tomorrow we are going to visit Old Town and take the trolley down to San Ysidro, then walk across the border into Mexico. I hope to have Mexican food for lunch…har har har!