First stop: San Diego!

My husband had to attend a business convention in beautiful San Diego two weeks ago.  He also had a business engagement in San Francisco scheduled for the following week. So instead of flying back and forth we decided to take some vacation time and drive up the Pacific Coast Highway, California State Route 1, between the two cities.

This was the second time I visited San Diego. I went there in 2008 and some of my first blog posts were about this wonderful city, which you can read under the San Diego label on my blog by clicking here.  This visit was shorter, but also quite memorable!

Everything about this city seems to be blue -- between the bright blue bay water and the cloudless blue sky. The scenes above were taken along the embarcadero and includes the statue “Unconditional Surrender,” which represents a famous photo taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt of a Sailor kissing a nurse in Time Square, New York City 1945, after the announcement of V-J Day. The statue is owned by the Sculpture Foundation of Santa Monica, Calif., and is on loan to the Port of San Diego.

There is a strong US Navy presence in the big bay and many decommissioned ships are on display for visitors to view.  It is amazing to see how large the Navy Aircraft Carrier Midway is! The U.S. Aircraft Carrier, "USS Midway" served 47 years, from the end of WW II to Desert Storm.  By the time the Midway was decommissioned in 1991, more than 225,000 men had served aboard. It was virtually a floating city on the sea!  Presently, The US Midway Museum has sixty exhibits and twenty restored aircraft on it to visit.

As this trip was so soon after our 37th wedding anniversary, we had a special dinner to celebrate at Croce's Restaurant and Jazz Bar, located at 802 5th Avenue in the historic Gaslamp quarter of San Diego.  Our wedding song was "Time in a Bottle," written and sung by Jim Croce. Croce was sadly killed in a plane crash in 1973, and his wife opened this restaurant soon afterward.  It was a very nostalgic place for us to dine and reminisce.  My husband ordered the grilled free-range chicken with forest mushroom risotto, asparagus and rosemary vodka sauce with fried leeks, and I had the shrimp carbonara fettuccini with Italian pancetta, kalamata olives with basil in a white garlic cream sauce, everything tasted absolutely exquisite! Croce's Jazz Bar has live music every night of the week and on Saturday and Sunday mornings for Brunch.  If you visit San Diego I highly recommend a special dinner at Croce's.  

Come back for my next post where I'll show you some of the beautiful gardens in Balboa Park in San Diego!

I'm linking this post to Mosaic Monday on Mary's blog Little Red House and Blue Monday on Sally's blog Smiling Sally.  Thank you to both hosts.