Weeks 10: San Diego (again)

I've been working on this post for a few days but as I write, we'll be leaving on our cross-country journey in about an hour! Patrick is still asleep so I'm letting him get as much rest as possible before we embark. Week 11 will have to wait--we'll try to keep daily updates for the trip back home then catch up on the rest of our LA posts when we get back.

Patrick spent most of week 10 weeding through dealer e-mails to find the best price. We finally settled on a dealer in San Diego, which is about two hours away. It was a bit of a drive but the price savings were significant, between what the dealer offered and the lower tax rate in that particular city.

Because we were planning on trading in Patrick's car, we took it to a car wash--in particular, the El Segundo Car Wash. This was the best car wash experience ever. In addition to a squeaky-clean car, we got to enjoy the statues within the car wash, and the colored soap and scrubbies. It was our source of entertainment for the evening. Seriously. If you're ever in El Segundo, do it.

We got Patrick's car appraised at CarMax and made the happy discovery of Randy's Donuts, a LA landmark. At the cashier's suggestion, I tried the buttermilk doughnut. Now, typically, I am a Krispy Kreme loyalist, but this doughnut was on par with Krispy Kreme, although completely different. It was like someone had taken buttermilk biscuit dough, deep fried it, and glazed it. It is one of the most delicious things I have ever had. If I thought they could be preserved for a week, I would bring several dozen home. So good.

We had planned to go to San Diego early on Saturday morning, but by sheer luck, our company had reserved a hotel room in San Diego that no one was staying in, and at 7PM on a Friday, our project assistant called and offered it to us for free! The person had canceled last minute and they couldn't get the money back, so it was going to go empty without us. Although it was late, we decided to take the adventure. We thoroughly enjoyed the night's sleep in a plushy bed with air conditioning.

That morning came the saga of the screwdriver. We needed to transfer our SC plates to the new car, but after we had driven it off the lot due to the fun combination of CA and SC laws. Luckily there was a Target near where we were staying. Unluckily, they did not sell one single Philips head screwdriver! (They had fancy ones with changing bits.) We were unwilling to spend $10 for a one-time use screwdriver since we have a billion at home. Luckily Patrick found one in the dollar section. Cost us $3, but at least that's better than $10.

We then bought our car (as previously blogged). This took four hours for no good reason. We were hungry and grumpy by the end. So we headed in to town to enjoy a Panera Bread picnic. It was nice to sit in a grassy courtyard and enjoy our sandwiches (grass is a rarity here).

When we visited San Diego over Independence Day, our Seaworld ticket was valid for a free second visit that we didn't use. So we decided to spend the remainder of our afternoon in Seaworld! For the record, to really enjoy the park, go ahead and take the two days--we hit most of what we wanted to do the first day, but were exhausted afterwards, and the second day gave us time to do a couple things that we missed. In retrospect we probably should have just spent two shorter days.

We finished up our evening with dinner in San Diego at Pho Point Loma, which was delicious, probably some of the best pho we've had. We also tried the Vietnamese iced coffee which was made with condensed milk. This is what Frappuccinos dream of being.

All right, off to packing our last few things!