San Diego in Fragments

The girl spent many hours boogie boarding in the surf, after having never really been in the ocean before. It was all we could do to get her out of the water. And now, her bathing suit is forever full of sand.

At a stop light, we pulled alongside a curvy red convertible, with the top down, driven by an ordinary looking guy. He was blasting his car stereo: bagpipes. Totally incongruous.

In an effort to inject a little history into the trip, we drove up to the San Diego Mission. I wondered, as we parked, why it seemed so crowded. Oops, we'd stumbled into Sunday morning mass.

We ate at a "nouvelle" Mexican restaurant, called El Agave, which doubles as a tequila museum. The food was mind-blowingly good - delicate, complicated, tasty - and nothing like the rice and beans slop you get in so many "Mexican" restaurants. Thousands of bottles of tequila surrounded us, lining all the walls and even on shelves hanging from the ceiling.

While I was at the conference, my peeps went to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo. In retrospect, my husband said he'd rather have spent two days at the Zoo. The girl would like to go back and buy everything at Sea World.

The storied Hotel Del Coronado was built in 1888, and is a huge pile of wood - one of a few surviving Victorian beach resorts. The main building is a riot of shingles and balconies, and when the fire alarm went off at 6:53 in the morning, we got the hell out. It turned out to be a false alarm, but we were shocked at how few people actually did leave their rooms. They'd have been toast if it had really been a fire.

A friend from high school - elementary school actually - met us for a drink. She'd moved to San Diego in 1987 and never looked back. I understand it; the weather and the natural beauty and the contained distances make it seem like a really livable city.

I knew San Diego was a military town, but I didn't know that it had a national cemetery. Fort Rosecrans overlooks the Pacific and is ineffably lovely. If I'd been in the military, I'd want to be buried there.