Ah, San Diego.

Prior to vis­it­ing the city, the only things I as­so­ci­ated with San Diego were the zoo and Anchorman. But af­ter my (too short) va­ca­tion there, I would not hes­i­tate to rec­om­mend it as a Nice Place to Visit.

I was pleas­antly sur­prised by the clean streets – Toronto’s a pig sty com­pared to San Diego – al­though there was a dis­tinc­tive lack of waste/recycling re­cep­ta­cles. You wouldn’t even know there’s a jail in the cen­tre of the city (al­though that ex­plains the plethora of bail bonds services).

I won’t list every­thing I saw and did while I was there, but will high­light some of my favourite places and activities.

The San Diego Zoo
During the golden age of Johnny Carson, Joan Embery, the am­bas­sador for the Zoo, was a fre­quent guest on The Tonight Show. She would al­ways bring a cou­ple of the an­i­mals from the zoo with her when she was on the show. As a kid, those made for my favourite episodes.

I loved watch­ing Carson’s re­ac­tions to the cute (baby mon­keys!), the scary (taran­tu­las!) and the un­pre­dictable (watch his re­ac­tion when a Burmese python gets a lit­tle too intimate).

So the Zoo was a must-see for the kid in me. The place is enor­mous and the ex­hibits are well-organized, and even with the aid of a map, I got lost twice. The ad­mis­sion price wasn’t cheap ($40) but it was def­i­nitely worth it!

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