Country Club Hotel Tijuana

Ok, here I go... This is the blog page for my trip to South America. For those of you bored enough to log on, I will try my best to keep my blogs and pictures up to date. I'll also try to keep the material interesting. Tomorrow is the big day and I am quite excited, why ...

My kids just love the Balboa Park. December Nights in Balboa Park is one annual family event we try to enjoy every year. So this time we are going to San Diego to check out the festivities in Balboa Park on December 4th and 5th. Balboa Park is delightfully lit up with sparkling lights. The best part is a chance to savor lip smacking delicacies from different countries ranging from ...

... line to get into the USA was MASSIVE to say the least. I'm sure we were waiting for at least an hour to finally reach the customs/border processing area. Yes it was still raining and by this time, my shoes and socks were soaked, my hair was wet and i was ready to faint from the lack of heat in my body. NEVER AGAIN. Note to self: check weather forecast before attempting to be a hero in another country!! lol

We got back to the hostel ok, and hijacked Starbucks for ...

... was delicious. Mmm.

Each time I come back to the USA from a lesser-developed country, I do have a much greater appreciation for it than before. San Diego was only about a 45-minute drive. We went into downtown. As I was driving I noticed an old sailing ship. I've been really interesting in sailing lately, so I thought we should go over and take a look. It turned out to be the Maritime ...

... two colours being red and green. Red was the colour for me which meant that i had to lay my bag on the table to be inspected. Now we are getting down to business i thought. The guy looked at me with a more serious look in his eyes and as he opened my bag he asked me if i spoke Spanish to which i replied yes. Then he asked where i had learned it, when i told him he gave me a big smile and said Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadriiiiiiiiiiii, Bienvendo a Mexico! Closed my bag up and prompted me ...

my fiancee and I ride on a train from San Diego to the border of Mexico. When we reach the border, we just go and walk to the bridge and go accross Mexico. Whoa!its amazing how big changes from the 1st world country(US) then u got to the 3rd world(Mexico). Many people selling you stuffs.It was so much like the Philippines its just the weather is cold there. We went to the have a look ...

... because when we went through to Mexico we weren't even checked! We asked the driver who thought it was funny he said 'everyone wants to go to the USA, who cares who comes to Mexico?' Anyway, so luckily there was only one other bus ahead of us in the bus queue who was having its engine bay and underneath bus inspected by USA officials (very thorough inspection!!!) but by this point it was 4:55pm. Totally scared we were still going to be left at the border point, which was ...

... shop in the middle of a walkthrough street where the man was very nice and didn't hassle us. He just allowed us to look and he actually gave us a discount because we had bought so much from him. In the end we probably spent about $30 on a tonne of knick knacks (shot glasses, keyrings, ornaments, magnets etc) and we were so grateful to have found a non-pushy shop that we gave him a $5 tip. It was heart warming to see how grateful he was of ...

... The limit for the airline is 50lbs per bag, and for each overweight bag you are suppose to be charged $50 per piece. So I was prepared to pay the one hundred dollars at the airport. Once we arrived, I chose to do curbside check-in because there was no line, and I wouldn't have to lug my luggage inside to the counter. I pushed my bags up to the desk in the luggage carts, and it came to be that the attendant was to lazy to take the bags off the cart and weigh ...

Today i flew from San Francisco (Oakland really) to San Diego and got to sit on a window seat over the wing (even though there was no seat allocation. Woo Hoo! It was pretty cool. There was a jelly belly sample and southwest's peanuts too.

I saw a lot of San Diego from the plane. It was pretty.

No real suprise here i also went shopping. I bought some converse chuck taylors and some dickies.

Tomorrow i go home. YAY! I've never been away from my family this long before.