San Diego catch up #2

So what else happened in San Diego, I hear you ask. Well all, or some anyway, will be revealed in due course, but first I'd like to mention that after Evensong yesterday I was very glad to hear that AC has enjoyed my various holiday posts. I mostly write this Blog for myself, but it's always nice to hear of someone who has enjoyed some of what I wrote, and especially so when it's someone I know in real life and even more so when it's someone who's been a friend for such a long long time.

Wednesday 29th October

This was the first full day of being together with RE in San Diego, and my brother, possibly glad to get some respite from being with me all day every day, gave us the keys to his Ford Focus (a bit easier to park than his Chevrolet Trailblazer!) and his SatNav, and left us to our own devices, so we initially went shopping to Seaport Village, which is pretty much an outdoor mall right on San Diego Bay, and near to the USS Midway aircraft carrier I mentioned on 25th October's post.

The weather, as ever in southern California by all accounts and by my limited experience, was bloody hot! Their website carries the tagline "everything under the sun" which is pretty clever and even if the "everything" bit isn't 100% accurate, the "sun" bit certainly is!

As we strolled around popping in and out of shops, one of our popping out moments coincided with a fair sized naval ship leaving San Diego Bay and passing Seaport Village. The top image on the right shows it with the Coronado Bridge in the background (which is apparently the third deadliest suicide bridge in the United States although why anyone would feel like suicide in the glorious weather of San Diego is beyond me. In Glasgow, fair enough, but in that sunshine?).

The bottom image was taken using the full zoom of my Fujifilm Finepix S5700. It has 10x optical zoom, which is pretty impressive on its own, but also has 4.8x digital zoom too. I've never been all that keen on using digital zoom, since my limited understanding of it is that all it does is artificially compensate for the reduced picture quality of the extra zoom by the simple expedient of "making up" the image by adding pixels. OK, I didn't explain that very well, so read this instead.

Anyway, the bottom image of the ship was taken using full digital zoom, and I have to confess that I'm quite pleased with the results of my first try at it.

One good find, bizarrely, in Seaport Village was a New Zealand shop, The Cabbage Tree, which RE naturally had to look round. We spent quite a while browsing and RE spent a while chatting to her fellow Kiwi who was behind the counter. Strange to think that RE had just travelled half way round the world from New Zealand, only to find reminders of her homeland at her destination!

We decided to head to the Old Town next, to soak up some history. I'd really enjoyed it when I'd been there with my brother the previous week, and enjoyed it again with RE.

We'd found out that my brother and his wife really liked a restaurant called Shogun which was about a twenty minute drive from their house, so we booked a table there and all headed off for what was going to be, for me anyway, a brand new experience. Teppanyaki. Ever tried it? I'd barely even heard of it. It's essentially a table round three sides of which the diners sit, and at the other side a chef prepares your food for you using the centre of the table which is a very very hot metal griddle.

But that's oversimplifying it a bit. It's an art. The chef doesn't just prepare your food, he entertains you while doing so, with flashy juggling of knives and spatulas and food bowls full of food, and with spectacular displays of flaming oils making flames shoot from the griddle up into the metal extractor hood above the table.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole shooting match, the food, the sounds, the smells, the sights, and if you get a chance to try Teppanyaki, then do so.

I've just discovered there's a Teppanyaki restaurant in Glasgow, in the North Rotunda, so I'm looking forward to trying it again.