Well, see. We were hanging out, and we wanted to not just always be “hanging out”, so we went to San Diego. We did some things while we were there, and man – looking at the pictures now, there were lots of vivid colors, and really, a lot of California is rather beautiful.
Oh, shoreline
So, first we stopped in La Jolla on our way down. They have a large statue of a man there. It is part of this Hammering Man series of installations, which apparently moves, a thing I did not realize until just now when looking it up. I really liked this large statue there, very simple, but striking me as very hard at work, standing there, against this beautiful coast and sky.
This man is taller than Nathan
We also saw a lot of gulls, and walked near the beach for a bit, simply enjoying the day. There were plenty of people out and about, and, well, there is a reason a lot of people head down there. It is super pretty.
Nice day along the coast.
From there, we kept driving down the coast, and headed up toward Torrey Pines – the natural reserve, that is. Not so much the golf course, as that’s not really so much my thing. There is a bit of visitor center up there, and some walks in the woods, and several trails heading out the bluffs overlooking the ocean. There were trails that also lead down closer to the ocean itself, and we didn’t go quite that far, but they certainly made for an appealing view.
Pathway continuing down the cliffside
Now, when there isn’t a clear “thing” to do, Nathan and I honestly aren’t all that great at, well, doing things. But after walking around this path and these bluffs for a bit, we thought it would be nice to head down to the beach. The sun was setting, and the clouds were rolling in a little bit, but we walked down there, added another layer or two, and actually just sat on the beach reading for a while. Much to my surprise…I enjoyed it. I often feel antsy when I’m “out” but don’t have a clear plan of what we’re doing, but this time, just sitting there and not doing much at all was really exceedingly pleasant.
totally looks like a relaxed position, right? not awkward at all? I thought so.
Post that, we found our hotel, went up to Pizza Port for dinner (which was, but no longer is, affiliated with Port Brewing, itself part of Lost Abbey, which we will get to later, we but we can forgive all of those, including myself, for whom this was confusing). We ate some pizza, drank some beer, and if I don’t misremember, I played some pinball, which makes any and every day better.
The next day we went out and about a bit with our bikes. We were, now that I am looking, near the Mission Beach area, and biked all along the bike path, which afford you sights of tons of people, and also some pretty outstanding houses. Many of them had some great touches on them.
A fireplace with a small girl blowing bubbles; Nathan along the bike path
We went down to a park area and circled around, being slightly envious of the paddle boarders (someday! someday I will try this activity!), and headed back up to the car. Our new goal – the Lost Abbey brewery. But first! We needed to stop for some food.
Driving along, I think I was very surprised to see “Milton’s”, makers of one of my favorite breads. I had no idea that a random arbitrary national brand had, like, a restaurant, but there it was, a random deli. Works for me.
The name isn’t quite so bright on the bag
But then! On to the Lost Abbey. At least at the time, they only ran public hours on Fri-Sat, so they could actually clear up some space for people to be in (I believe they have a much larger / more formal space as of this writing). So no active brewing operations were going on, but they’ll give you a run around the tanks, show you all the massive amount of beer aging in barrels, and we also got a nice rundown of the machine that puts the wire twist tops on the cork sealed bottles. Apparently it’s Italian, and…finicky. Once you get it up and running, it will keep running happily, but as soon as you turn it off, there is another round of “…as soon as you manage to get it up and running”, which might require any amount of effort.
As they have it listed, “In Illa Brettanomyces Nos Fides” (“In Brettanomyces we trust”), and Nathan admiring the barrel aging.
The bottle capping machine comes complete with some correct, but…ominous warnings
Post that, well…we tasted some beer, and we drove home.
Fin.
