Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Car Adventures

Sorry for the delay in the blog updates - it's been go-go-go down here in San Diego!

On Sunday, the plan was to pick up my hire car and drive south from Santa Monica to La Jolla (just north of San Diego). However, thinking about this at breakfast in the hostel, I guessed that there must be some other travellers who can benefit from the lift to SD and give me a) company on the journey, b) 'advice' if I do anything silly on the road, like drive on the left, and c) maybe a contribution towards fuel. Some gentle soliciting found me a young lady called Patricia who lived in SD and was originally planning to get the train.

I caught the bus over to the hire company and checked in. The sad news is, it turns out there weren't any Mustangs available, but I was given a car which I've grown to like quite a lot. It's a Chrysler 200 and, of course, it's convertible. I paid quite a lot of money to hire a car for a week, mainly because I'm under-25, so I thought it wouldn't make much difference to go with a really nice car!



Roof up...



Roof down...


And needing a satnav to go from A to B, I have attached my phone to the dashboard with black insulation tape and plugged it into the cigarette lighter to charge it. This system works really, really well! I also bought an Aux cable to link my mp3 player to the (pretty good) sound system.

So I went to pick up Patricia, who was disappointingly ambivalent about the car, and we drove south in the direction of San Diego. Patricia recommened going down the Pacific Coast Highway so we tried to make our way there. However the 'highway' was mostly residential so, after 2 hours and still not having left LA, we got on the highway and whizzed South much faster!

I dropped Patricia off in San Diego and then went up to La Jolla (a few miles North) to meet my host Brandy, who is a colleague of my Dad's. We went straight out for dinner with one of Brandy's friends, and had a magnificent Sushi feast with much wine. I've never had Sushi off the menu before (mainly conveyor-belt style) but this food was just fantastic. We then returned to the house for more wine. That's why I'm so red in this photo!



Brandy, wine and Colin
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2 comments:

  1. Loving the blog Colin,... almost feel like I'm there with you! Very jealous of your adventures..hope you have a great time!

    Cheers

    Jamie

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  2. Looks like a very swish car to me, especially compared to the car in front of it! Glad you had some company for the longish journey.

    Seems like you've got a nice host for the next couple of days and I look forward to reading your next update! :)

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