San Diego

I have nothing to offer on the art front, as I've been home very little for the last month, so I thought I'd share some pictures of my trip to San Diego. I love seeing posts full of what I call my blog friends' vicarious travel (especially my English friends!)  This was our first trip away without our dogs and for a whole week, and it was really wonderful, which doesn't bode so well for our dogs and future extended vacations!

My husband lived in San Diego for many years, and was very excited to finally show it to me.  It was wonderful being taken around by someone who knew and loved the area so well.  

This is the famous Hotel Del on Coronado Island, it was built in 1888 and is a historic landmark.  It's really like going back in time being there, It's gorgeous and luxurious with lots of wonderful restaurants and stores, but you feel like you could still run into Marilyn Monroe or a President there (lots of pics on the walls of famous stars and politicians). 

Charles Lindbergh

Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon (Some Like it Hot was filmed here)

The next few pics are of Balboa Park - I was pretty amazed by it - it's larger than Central Park in New York,  It's full of museums and gorgeous historic buildings, along with a huge open air ampitheater.  It's fun to walk around there at night as it's all lit up.  There are several live theaters there as well, one of which is a replica of the Old Globe Theater in London.

We were fascinated by these roots, the tree itself was amazingly large. Apparently a famous arborist traveled the world and brought back hundreds of trees that were planted here.

This was our view at lunch looking over the marina to the city.

This was my favorite beach, at La Jolla.  This artist was painting a beautiful landscape and it made me wish I'd brought some art supplies.

That same beach had wonderful rock formations and tide pools to explore. We were fascinated by this formation in the rock that looks just like a squished cowboy hat.

I made a video panning slowly along our beautiful beach that I was going upload here for you guys, but apparently it's too big and blogger won't upload it.  Grrrrr!  Well, it's back to reality for me, and I'm saving the video on my desktop for moments when I'm stressed so I can just stop and watch it.

As tomorrow is Halloween, I'll leave you with a few pics from my Halloween-crazy neighborhood.

I thought this one was particularly creepy

The scale of what some groups of houses did was amazing, and impossible to photograph well.  I just can't imagine where they store it all.

Loved this - they drove this wonderful old truck onto their lawn, with a couple of joy-riding skeletons in it, and a squished body underneath the front tire.  Really hard to get a good ;picture of it.

Pirate ship coffin