First week in San Diego

On Tuesday we went to Sea World. Nadia and Ian have been to the Sea World in Orlando three times, but Oliver was only 9 months old and then 2 1/2 years old the two times he went, so he didn't remember those visits. We saw three shows - Pets Rule (which was Ian's favorite when he was a toddler), the dolphin show, and the sea lion show. In the past we always attended the "Shamu" show, but they don't do a show with the orcas any more. They have two times a day when you can come and watch them do their own thing. We spent seven hours in the park. We packed our lunches and ate dinner at Denny's after we left the park. The sky ride gave us a nice view of the bay. Ian and Nadia loved the Manta roller coaster. I had to convince Ian to give it a try, and later I convinced Paul to ride it once. Nadia and I planned to ride their new roller coaster (Electric Eel) but it was closed for technical difficulties. The sky tower was also closed that day. We have a pass that gets us into Sea World and Aquatica as many times as we want for seven days, but we would have to pay parking and it

doesn't seem worth it just so Nadia and I could ride that roller coaster. It was a bit chilly that day so we all skipped the white water rapids ride, but Paul and the kids did ride the flume. Since Ian didn't see any octopus on Monday, he was happy to see a few of them at Sea World as well as a cuttlefish, which is another of his favorite sea creatures.

Only Paul's mom rented a motorized wheelchair at Sea World on Tuesday and Disneyland on Thursday, but on Wednesday they rented two of them at the San Diego Zoo. The rest of us have done a lot of walking this week! They stayed at home on Monday, yesterday, and today. According to my phone app, we walked
3.8 miles on Sunday, 3.3 miles on Monday, 5.8 miles on Tuesday (Sea World), 6.3 miles on Wednesday (San Diego Zoo), 10.9 miles on Thursday (Disneyland), 3.2 miles on Friday (two museums in Balboa Park), and 2.8 miles today (La Jolla Cove). Three nights we walked to a swimming pool and jacuzzi that is not close to our

condo. Today the kids swam in the pool (no jacuzzi there) right behind our condo while I was cooking dinner.

The weather has been pretty - lots of sun, but it's been quite a bit cooler than in Pennsylvania, which was a shock to Paul considering we are definitely farther south. When walking around the zoo we really appreciated the milder temps, but when we're trying to swim outside we would have preferred it to be a bit warmer.

I'll write some more about our adventures at the zoo and Disneyland sometime in the next week, but I wanted to post something because I have taken oodles of pictures - probably more than I took the past five months combined. My favorite day of the vacation thus far was today when we visited the seals and sea lions at La Jolla Cove. We also saw ground squirrels and several kinds of birds. The kids had fun playing in the Pacific Ocean even though the water temperature was only 63.