San Diego Sea World

On Monday the 3rd after a good sleep, we packed up our things into Kevin and Rhonda's big passenger van and headed off down the #5 Interstate to Los Angeles and San Diego. It was beautiful weather for driving. We stopped for lunch at Subway and sat outside in the sun. Later on, we stopped again, just south of Los Angeles at a beach and had some leisure time. We got to our hotel around 4 p.m. and I was impressed at how nice it was. The Dana Hotel was right on the ocean and had two outdoor pools. We settled in and then went for a dip in the pool. Asha had her first experience in a pool, an outdoor one in March! She wasn't that thrilled, and unfortunately got really spooked by Joel and his googly goggles. Oops! So she didn't stay in the water for very long. That evening we went to the hotel restaurant and had great food. Dad raved about the chicken quesadillas and I had awesome fish in chips; of course you have to have seafood if you are on the coast. That night we settled in for a comfortable sleep, except for the pillows....they were not that great.

The next morning we woke up and had muffins and cinnamon buns in our hotel room before catching the shuttle to Sea World. Joel and Kezia were very excited about seeing the whales. Dad bought us all annual passes, since they were the same price as the day passes. But because of such stringent security (taking photo ID and fingerprinting all of us!), we knew we wouldn't be able to pass on our passes to someone else once we left CA. Oh well. We figured we probably would come down at least once more before heading back to Canada.

The shows at Sea World were so impressive. Joel stood up for the entire Shamu the Killer Whale show and watched intently. We opted out of sitting in the soak zone, but had a good chuckle seeing people get completely soaked by the dolphins and whales; I think they figured they would just get sprinkled. Even Asha enjoyed the shows. Kezia's highlight was seeing the huge turtles (just like the ones in Nemo!) and Joel's highlight was seeing the dolphins jumping. I enjoyed watching the sea lions holler for fish and the cute penguins. We also walked through aquarium tunnels and had sharks swim over us; that was a bit unnerving. The eels were creepy and the beluga whales were beautiful. We spent the entire day there and at the end, even though we were all warm and tired, no one was cranky!

After we got back to our hotel, we had a bit of a rest before heading to supper. The restaurant wasn't as nice as the one we ate at the night before. And after supper, we went for a little drive and picked up doughnuts. Dad was excited about ordering in Spanish and the kids were just thrilled with the treats. We headed back to our rooms and fell into our beds. The next day had more adventures in store for us...Spanish adventures.