Round the West - Day 32

[deralte]

Our stated goal for the day was visiting the San Diego Maritime Museum. We actually checked in to our hotel first, for once, and then had a fantastic Chinese lunch (of actual Chinese food, not American Chinese food) before hitting the museum. It's on the harbour by necessity since the entire museum is housed on the ships it showcases - a very good idea imo. There were a lot of ships I wanted to see with top of the list being the Soviet submarine, the HMS Surprise and The Star of India. We started on the Star of India (claims to be the oldest age of sail ship still working from 1863) which was a big ship and a lot of fun to explore, though how educational the mini-pirate ship in the bottom was, we will never know. I had fun playing in it *L* The ship was busy because they were taking on a bunch of school children for the evening to crew it. I though it'd be noisy but actually they whipped those kids into shape in less than ten minutes. After that, the kids didn't talk, asked permission to enter and leave rooms, walked in single file. Very impressive, and they got to crew the ship for the whole night. I'd sign on for that. After exploring every inch of the Star, we moved on to the b-39 Foxtrot class Soviet Submarine. I may have been humming the Soviet national anthem for most of my exploration of it... They haven't changed much of it, and you still have to climb through small portholes to visit different parts of the ship. It looked quite similar to the u-boat, which isn't all that surprising since the Soviet's based their designs on them. I thought it was all very cool. Did you know they weren't allowed to have vodka on those subs? And yet when they retired and sold off one, they found dozens of bottles of vodka hidden strategically about the ship *L*

Our next ship was the HMS Surprise which is a replica, and was used for Master and Commander. This was very obvious once you get inside (or take a look at the stern), and it was more like exploring a movie set. They had the costumes from the movie there and pictures from the production. It was all very interesting, though I had no one to make jokes about weevils too. We then went to explore the steamboat which wasn't as interesting though it was cool to be allowed to explore the boiler room. By then, it was getting quite late (the museum is open until 8pm which I heartily approve of) and the moon was rising. We got directions from my friend A. who goes to uni here in San Diego and went to pick her up at campus, then drive to a good little sushi place, Arigato, near her house. It had very good eel and the salmon was nice as well, though there was no inari *pout* I liked having proper gyoza too (when I make it, it always falls apart *sigh*). Though cream cheese on sushi is weird, and they put avacado in everything, mostly because they have far too many avacado *L* For desert we had tempura fried plum wine ice cream, which was very good, and talked for ages and sipped green tea. From there, we dropped her off at her house and headed back to our own hotel.

Comments

[tritoneclarinet.livejournal.com]

:D I'm glad you went there... Definitely one of my favorite museums in San Diego, and the displays are fun to play around in. I think I'm going to have to go again next time I'm in California, because it sounds like they have some new exhibits since I went there last. Are you planning on going to any of the other museums in the area?

[deralte.livejournal.com]

Uh, we went to the San Diego Zoo. That's about it. We're already north of Los Angeles at this point.