Monday morning we got up around 9 and drove via the harbor over to the Old Town. Along the way we were astonished at how few cars were on the San Diego roads, on a Monday morning during what we would consider rush hour. We ate breakfast--good freshly squeezed orange juice and nice huevos rancheros with great runny yolks--at a little place called O'Hungry's just outside of the Old Town historical spot, and found a free parking spot on the street outside. Then we walked around the Old Town for awhile, poking through the different free mini-museums there: I liked the house and the school, while Robert preferred the telegraph office and the buggy-stagecoach museum. We bought some freshly made saltwater taffy (what's a vacation without the stuff?), which we proceeded to eat throughout the day, and then drove the short distance to Seaworld. We arrived at Seaworld at 11:20, using a $3 off coupon from the Zoo map yesterday, and were amazed at the number of schedule things to do and see at Seaworld, as opposed to our relatively free-wheeling day at the Zoo. We saw an exotic bird show, with the birds swooping down to the stage from a blimp tethered above; a penguin feeding presentation; a sea lion, otter, and walrus show with bad comedy; the new Shamu show with four different killer whales; and a dolphin and whale show. In between, we walked through all the aquariums, saw the Pirates 4D movie (overrated and not worth the wait, unless, like Robert, you are an avid Leslie Nielsen fan who will laugh at anything the man does, and also appreciate the final brief appearance of Rodney Dangerfield in the movie), rode the Shipwreck Rapids get-wet ride, and looked at all the other animals, including turtles, manatees, and flamingoes. Note that Shipwreck Rapids has a nifty little feature where someone standing outside the ride can pay a quarter to squirt a fair amount of water directly on your raft--people actually paid to do this to us even though they didn't know anyone in our raft. Neither the Shamu show nor the dolphin show really got us wet at all, even though we were sitting in the "soak zone," but depending on the angle of your seat, many people did indeed get soaked. The manatees were great--huge and slow and sleepy and happy, even slurping up lettuce with very little energy.

We had a very nice day, though I wouldn't say Seaworld was my favorite amusement park of all time, unlike Jason and Alessio. We dined on popcorn (not as large a bag as Alessio got our hopes up for) and the most amazingly large cotton candy. For only $2.47, you get a cotton candy as large as your torso--really, the picture doesn't do it justice. Needless to say, thus fortified, we had a great day; we left the park at 6 and drove back to LA, stopping along the way at Fry's (of course) and grabbing dinner at Tito's at 9 on our final way home.

Pictured on this page, from top to bottom: shamu with his trainer seated on his nose, shamu posing for a picture, another whale leaping, an electric eel burrowed into a rock, a closeup of a flamingo, a group of sea lions, Christina with the cotton candy, and Robert and Christina at the end of the day. The story about that picture is that Christina spent a nice long time framing the perfect picture of her and Robert, just inside the park at the end of the day; finding the spot where you could see them with the front of a giant Shamu in the background; adjusting the zoom; finding a person to take the picture--and then accidentally deleted the picture, which we found out just as we were leaving the park. So, we settled for framing another picture of ourselves with the back of a giant penguin in the background instead.