On the night we arrived (now two nights ago; I’m blogging in the morning this trip), ten of us had dinner night at a restaurant called “d.”
Fun. Chatty. Dishy. Pretty standard fare among a group of gay men getting to know each other over dinner. Beginning in the lower left and going around the photo are Kenny, Kevin, [what should have been Jeff, but he slipped off to the men’s room], David, Tom, Rex, Phil, and Mark. I meant to take some pictures of the food, but I was having so much fun talking that I only got a shot of Mark’s coconut-shrimp appetizer.
Mark and I rode back to our hotel with Tom and Mark—who have been traveling in southern California and Colorado for a couple weeks and have a rental car—and called it an early night. To our bodies, it was after midnight.
Our hotel—the Marriott Coronado—is a winding place with a long courtyard filled with fountains and ponds, trees and tropic plants, and even a walk-in bird cage. I could recuperate here pretty easily, even if I just spent the afternoons sitting on a chaise lounge looking at the bay. This is a shot across the courtyard and back to our door, which is the one on the left.
We’re nearly at the end of the hotel wing, so you can imagine this kind of greenery running for another couple hundred feet back to the lobby, which is to the right in this photos. Here’s a shot from just outside our door looking back toward where I took the previous photo.
I slept in late the following day after a fitful night; in Columbus, it was nearly noon before I rolled out of bed. I would have liked to have slept (how’s that for a complicated verb?) a little longer, but there are things to do and places to see. I’m still trying to find free or reasonable wi-fi so that I can post this damn thing! For what we’re paying per night, you would think that the hotel wi-fi would be free or at least reasonable. No such luck, so its off to find a Starbucks with a decent connection.
Because we got such a late start and had no real plans yet, we decided just to breakfast at the hotel. Meh. Hotel eggs and bacon. When we finished, we stopped by the concierge to ask where we could find some nice art galleries. After twenty minutes waiting for another couple (who, apparently, had never heard of a guide book or Yelp) to finally release Norma’s attention, she suggested the Gaslamp District and gave us directions. I was a little suspicious when she said it’s reminiscent of the French Quarter in New Orleans, but we decided to give it a go. We had planned to stay on Coronado yesterday, but Norma’s advice sounded better suited to a Friday jaunt than to Saturday.
At the Marriott pier, where we would take the Marriott water shuttle back to the mainland, we met the captain Kent and his trusty Coast Guard intern, Chris. We were the only ones on the boat, but Kent and Chris were really friendly, and we had a nice chat on the 10-minute ride over to San Diego.
We spent a significant part of our time just walking in the Gaslamp District; my suspicions turned out to be well-founded. The district is comprised almost entirely of bars and eateries. We found only three galleries, none of which were really to our taste (though the works by Dr. Seuss and Chuck Jones at the Chuck Jones Gallery were fun to see), and no shopping to speak of. The district is very much centered on nightlife, and it seemed to me to be just one step above a campus bar district. That was disappointing. What did work out for us, though, was having lunch at Union Kitchen and Tap and getting advice from one gallery owner to visit Little Italy.
Little Italy turned out to be the kind of neighborhood we were looking to walk in. It had home decor stores and some interesting shops and restaurants, residences and gardens, and a few galleries. Unfortunately, we spent too much time in the Gaslamp District and then walking to Little Italy to see many of the galleries. We did stop in one, though—Meyer Fine Art—that was just finishing up a Dali show and opening a show of vintage posters. The owner was very fun to talk to and knew quite a bit about his artists and the histories of the pieces he was showing.
We started heading back to the marina at around 3:30 so that we could rest a bit and the get ready for our dinner plans at 7. Our little excursion ended up being about 6 miles long. If we have time Sunday, I’d like to go back to Little Italy and see more of it. That the neighborhood is having its annual Italian Festival that day is an additional draw. If we don’t make it back this trip, I will definitely return to Little Italy during my next one.
Kent and Chris met us back at the marina for our return trip to the hotel, and after a little rest and sprucing up, we met the boys in the lobby, from which we would be walking to dinner. (That turned out to be another two-mile walk. Not that I’m complaining, but we took a car back from dinner. My dogs were barking after waking eight miles.)
We had dinner at Miguel’s Cocina. Being the official wedding photgrapher, I milled around the room before dinner arrived and took a few shots of the 40 or so people who came from out of town for the wedding. It speaks to how well Jeff and Kevin are loved by their friends that 40 people would travel—most of us across country—for a small-ish wedding.
Dinner was a limited menu, so it was a bit of a challenge for me, but in order not to make the waiters’ lives any more complicated than they needed to be, I muddled through. It really wasn’t awful, though. Kevin had already warned them that I have an onion allergy, and they were able to simplify my mahi mahi so that I could eat it. The mud pie dessert made me forget about the salad.
A quick car ride back with a nice couple from DC whom I’d like to get to know better (the rest of the troupe went clubbing) wound down our day. Today is the wedding. We’ll see if I’m up for a late night blog or if I put it off until Sunday.