We spent most of today in Tijuana, Mexico. The one-hour trolley ride down to San Ysidro was fine, very pleasant. Crossing the border was easy, they don’t even check identification or anything - apparently the prevailing feeling is, “who wants to escape the U.S. and go to Mexico?” I wanted to get my passport stamped as a souvenir anyway, but the immigration officer didn’t seem to understand and kept insisting we didn’t need a stamp if we were Americans just coming in for the day. He declined to stamp it, oh well.

So we walked across the border and into downtown Tijuana. The high-pressure sells start instantly. Everyone you pass has something to sell you. It was supremely nerve-wracking for me…I have such a hard time saying no, I feel bad for declining because really they’re just doing their jobs. And there are little kids selling gum, bracelets, etc. but they are supposedly also pickpockets, so you have to turn them down too…and I just felt bad for that, like their parents would beat them if they didn’t sell all their trinkets that day. A says they wouldn’t do that, and nobody is starving, but it was still hard for me. I was kind of tempted to shop in some of the pharmacies…wouldn’t it be nice to have a supply of Cipro in case of anthrax attacks, or maybe some Flexeril or Ultram in case of muscle spasms or major pain? I didn’t bother, though. The only price I saw was Viagra for $4/pill, and that’s four times what it costs in the U.S., so none of these were a good deal anyway…it would just be a way of evading the need for a prescription. Plus, who knows what’s in that stuff?!

The only things we did buy were sunglasses ($7 down from $10, because I couldn’t SEE) and a handcrafted cat ($3 down from $5, though she originally said $1 and then said $5 after she had wrapped it up!). A collects little native cats from places she’s been, and even if this one was made in China, it still looks cute. We ended up having lunch at the Tijuana outpost of the Hard Rock Cafe, partly because the restaurants hassle you on the street as much as the vendors, and partly because I knew they would have something vegetarian - everywhere else would probably have lard beans, etc. The pedestrian line to get back into the U.S. was horrible, it was almost an hour from when we joined the line to when we finally made it through and got on the northbound trolley. Turns out Tijuana is one of the busiest border crossings in the world!

When we got back to the Old Town area, we walked around the Old Town San Diego State Historic Park for a while. I got a sweater that doesn’t really resemble anything Mexican, but I thought it was pretty anyway. It was $37 but I could picture it selling for $80 in a catalog. For dinner we went over to the North Park area, to a restaurant called El Comal that I read on Yelp would have good vegetarian options. Unfortunately it turned out they use chicken stock in both the beans and the rice, so I just ate my enchiladas with molé sauce (which didn’t have meat or anything, we asked). They had pretty good drinks…I had two and a half of their tequila, Midori, and pineapple juice drink…I forget what they called it. I couldn’t even finish my food, there was so much! I think tomorrow we are going to the San Diego Zoo before driving back to Los Angeles.