San Diego, day 2

Above: Coffee cake.

What was left of the coffee cake.

Above: Pineapple tart - a solid recommendation by the bakery staff.

Above: After a chilly, grey morning, the sun had now come out. We were right near Balboa Park so we made a few passes through it.

Above: The park has a nice sampling of desert flora. This is one of the more bizarre cacti.

Above: Since the sun was out, we took the top down and went on a long drive around the east side of the bay to Coronado Island, where we collected shells on the beach and marvelled at the clear water. We then took the scenic route down Highway 75 around the south west part of the bay. There were an alarming number of Mustangs on the road, mostly convertibles. There were also a few Cooper MINIs, but more on that later.

Breaking off of I-5 and merging onto I-8, we drove through Mission Bay (a far cry from Coronado) and up to La Jolla, where we snaked through the small streets and expensive homes lining the sea cliffs. Surfers bobbed up and down in the surf like so many sea lions. I stepped into a Jack in the Box for the first time (and immediately regretted it, you call those seasoned curly fries?), and we had dinner at Nobu Restaurant in Solana Beach.

For being the second largest city in California, San Diego doesn't seem very big. We took the scenic route up Highway 101 (and even passed the Salk Institute, for those of you who heard the tag-team review of My Architect that Geoff and I gave, but still arrived at the restaurant 40 minutes ahead of the schedule and thoroughly confused the Latina hostess. We had a conversation that went something like this.

"Hi, we're here for dinner and we have a reservation."
"Your name?"
"Larry, for two."
"Oh, you're forty minutes early. We can't seat you yet."
"Can we sit at the bar?"
"Oh, we don't reserve the bar. It's for walk-ins only."
"Right - well, can we sit there anyway?"
"But we don't reserve the bar."
"I see, but we're here now. Is there a reason why we can't sit at the bar?"
"You have a reservation."

I surreptitiously scan the restaurant over her head - this must be some sort of hidden camera gag.

"Okay, how about we drop the reservation and sit at the bar?"
"Oh... okay. What's your name?"

If only there was a camera to capture the look on my face. That conversation just should not have happened. Certainly not at a sushi restaurant with a parking lot resembling a Mercedes/Lexus dealership.

Finally seated at the bar, we had our next shock when we saw the sushi chef pull out an entire maki roll from under the sushi bar and slice it for serving. "He did what?!" Hushed, urgent tones and gesturing under the bar. This wasn't looking good.

Despite these false starts, everything turned out just fine. The pre-made rolls were just California rolls. Everything we ordered was prepared before us. The salmon sushi was topped with a sliver of marinated onion and soy sauce. The chefs noticed my raised eyebrows and assured me it would taste exceptionally good, and fact it did. Being in California, I indulged my craving for albacore, which you just can't get in any decent (raw) quality in New York. The chef comped us some crab and nearly an entire bowl of uni. I tried a little bit of the latter but I'm still not unconvinced. I called Geoff and we had a drunken conversation about tipping etiquette because this was the first time I wanted to make sure the chef was going to get props over the inattentive waitress.