Keizo arrived in Arizona July 18th, and said something like "let's go back inside" the second he stepped out of the elevators in the parking garage at the airport. Welcome to summer in the desert!
As if the heat wasn't rough enough, I had four more days of work to finish up. Faced with sitting home alone without a car for 6 hours a day or coming along and volunteering at camp, Keizo chose the latter and learned what it was like to try and keep the peace among a dozen feisty campers. Every evening after work we had some sort of social engagement; so much for a vacation! Finally Saturday rolled around and we made preparations for our much anticipated trip to San Diego. Saturday evening and Sunday morning were spent with Andrew and Megan in Tucson and we spent Sunday afternoon in the car heading west. We arrived at our rental bungalow around 8 PM, grabbed some snacks at the grocery store, made a quick trip to the beach just to prove to ourselves we had actually made it to the coast and called it a night.
It wasn't until Monday that vacation truly started, and we made sure not to overtax ourselves. After sleeping in, we grabbed bagels and coffee on the way to the beach. We tossed a ball around, Keizo splashed around in the waves and we walked out to the end of the long pier in Ocean Beach. By the time we got back to land, we were feeling a tad hungry. We stopped in an ice cream shop that only took cash and emerged with two mini cones. I had Blueberry Cheesecake, which was nice and creamy and just enough to tide me over until our next stop...
...2 PM happy hour at the Blue Parrot! We started out with Stone Pale Ale and added
a giant plate of nachos and
shrimp cocktail. The nachos were pretty average, but by 2 PM we were ready to eat anything. The shrimp cocktail was good, although I don't think cooking shrimp and pouring cocktail sauce from a bottle is really that difficult.
With our tummies extra full, we decided to get out of the sun for a bit and went back to the house for a nap. We finished off the afternoon with some relaxing on the patio and got ourselves cleaned up just in time to see the sunset on our walk to dinner.
We weren't too hungry, so we decided to try The Joint, which was a combination sushi/tapas bar. There was even a samurai painting on one side of the door facing off with a conquistador on the other. Clever.
We ordered wine, salad and two sushi rolls. The salad was arugula, cherry tomatoes, candied pecans with a light vinegarette dressing and helped counteract the heaviness of lunch.
For sushi we got a California roll (because we were in California!)
and what was listed on the menu as "Tempura Yam Roll" which was a thin slice of kabocha tempura with cucumber and yuzu (Japanese citrus) The yuzu stole the show, giving the roll a very unique flavor. It took me a few minutes to place what it was, but it instantly reminded me of Japan!
So "nothing" actually included a lot of eating and walking to and from meals, but no cooking and no real schedule and that is good enough for me.
I'm thinking "Hurry up with the photo, I'm thirsty!"
