San Diego, Part 2

The Salt Lake City airport was immense, but distressingly similar to Eugene's. I remembered what I'd heard about the numbing sameness of airports, and apparently it's mostly true. They do at least make an effort to give you a clue where you are, with framed landscape photos and work by local artists.

The amenities within the "secure" area were impressive at Eugene, and spectacular at SLC. The prices were surprisingly kind, considering they had a captive audience. We came upon a row of bulk snack bins, surreally set right into the wall of the concourse, and bought some sugared peanuts and malt balls off a woman I took for Ethiopian but who turned otu to be Somali.

The second plane was also a Canadair Regional Jet, a CRJ700, the same diameter but somewhat longer. As on the first leg of our flight, we sat at the back, in the cheap seats that can't be reclined. They packed us in good, with no unsold seats. Very clever of them.

We got to San Diego just about sunset, the lights starting to come in down below. The runways are short at San Diego, and the approach is steep, giving you a thrilling view of the city below. I recognized the Prado in Balboa Park as it flashed by my window.

We picked the Dollar Rent-a-Car shuttle out of a welter of car agenvcy and hotel shuttle buses and were quickly taken to the Dollar office. The agent at the desk pressed us to upgrade to "economy" from "compact, and we finally agreed to pay the extra money. Then she announced that they had no "economy" cars on the lot, and offered us a PT Cruiser at no extra charge. She also let slip that thery had no "compact" cars; I suppose that means that we could have stuck to our guns and gotten the PT for the price of a compact, but it was a good deal anyway, and why be greedy?

Cook Family gatherings usually involve a lot of time spent gathered at poolside, but by the time we were checked in, the gathering had broken up for the night. My aunt Sandra came down to meet us, though, and told us that the family planned to accumulate gradually the next morning over the La Quinta Inn's continental breakfast and then go over to a Mexican restaurant in Old Town for brunch.

Kathe, Waldy and I went back to our own hotel, around the block from La Quinta, made ourselves relatively comfortable in our room. We were annoyed to find that the room, which was supposed to have two beds, didn't. Waldy went out and roamed the streets for awhile and then returned to sleep on the couch. We found out the next day that the couch was actually a foldaway bed, but Waldy preferred sleeping on it as a couch anyway.

[To be continued]