Aviva and I decided to drive to San Diego on July 24 and spend three nights there. It was Aviva’s first time in San Diego.

We stayed at the Best Western Plus Bayside Inn. After checking in, we walked to Little Italy and had a good dinner at Buon Appetito. The meal was really good. We walked around Little Italy and found a cool gallery for the artist Mee Shim – we loved a lot of the work and purchased a circular print on steel.

The next morning, Aviva woke up very stiff – the beds were too soft. So we decided we’d change hotels the last night. We got cleaned up, ate some breakfast, and checked out a few hotels. We decided we’d move to the Marriott Gaslamp on Friday. Then we drove across the long bridge to Coronado. We shopped a bit around town and then visited the famous hotel – the largest and I think the oldest all-wood hotel in the US. We went back to the Gaslamp district for dinner.

On our last day we relocated our stuff to the Marriott Gaslamp. After that we drove out to Balboa Park – if you visit San Diego you must go here. Some of the buildings go back to just after the turn of the last century, built for an exposition. The collection of art at the Timkin is small but nice, and I bought a catalog of the San Diego Museum of Art because I liked their small collection quite a bit; they have a painting of the Lamb of God that makes Aviva emotional. At one of the cafes on the grounds, the bartender talked about the Italian coffee they serve – Aviva had a cup. It turns out they get their coffee from a local cafe near the Best Western hotel where we were staying, so we hustled over to Cafe 1870 (or Cafe Barbera) and bought some for ourselves (you can purchase it online). We then went to Hillcrest and shopped and had dinner at a Thai place.

We got up and drove out of San Diego and stopped at Mission San Juan Capistrano; it’s a pretty large mission that was damaged quite a bit by earthquakes. There was a wedding going on in the new basilica next to the mission.