Thank you Sharon :)

Spent today with Sharon, smacss on flickr. She took me to Balboa Park in San Diego. What a place! I don't know how many acres the park covers but it's lots! There are something like 14 different museums plus craft shops, cafes and restaurants, plus a zoo. We only had a look at a couple of the museums - an art gallery, the photographic museum and the natural history museum. They all had great stuff. The photography museum had a display of some guy's 365 project. That was cool. There were a few photographs on display which led us both to say, "I could have taken that." :) Some fascinating stuff in the art gallery - the Russian display was particularly interesting. Most of the pieces were on wood and were all religious icon type of thing. Sharon has been to Russia so it was really good to hear her views on travel there. Guided tour is definitely the way to go!
Balboa Park was built in 1915 (I think) for an expo. I thought the architecture was really interesting. Most buildings are plain rendered concrete, but sort of sandstone coloured, and with Spanish style arches and walkways. Each building had some sort of intricate decoration around the doorways or over little towers, etc. I thought a couple of these decorated bits looked quite eastern in their influence - Cambodian or Indian mostly. Up close, they were definitely western in subject matter. Just an impression I got. Made me wish I'd taken the real camera.
We also wandered through the botanical house. Orchids aplenty!! Even saw a few tree ferns :)
Took too many plant pics and not enough of the architecture early on and then the baby camera's battery went flat. Note to self: buy several spare batteries for baby camera as they don't last long at all! That was the only disappointment of the day.
Sharon took the coast road back to Oceanside and so I got a quick look at Carlsbad and the other towns between San Diego and Oceanside.
Pics will be up on flickr later (when battery is charged and I can get them off the camera and into computer!).

I really enjoyed today Sharon, thank you :-D