Thursday, September 11 — On Thursday, August 27, we left Kosmos at 0400, drove to the car rental center, returned the car and caught the shuttle to the airport. We made it to the airport in plenty of time to clear security and make it to the gate in time to board our 0700 flight. We flew Southwest and had been assigned an early B number for boarding, so we were excited about getting good seats. However, we found out we were flying with the Annapolis water polo team, who took up probably half the seats. When it came time to board, they called active military for early boarding. The team lined up. When we boarded, we managed to snag the very last block of three seats together, in the very last row. Here was a shot of Baltimore from the plane.
Our time in San Diego was busy. Eric and Christi primarily focused on getting life chores done. Christi also spent a lot of time working on her land life project. While we didn’t get to see nearly as many people as we would have preferred, at least we were able to see some loved ones. We also visited a couple of museums and went out to eat several times.
We’d been invited to join a private guided tour of the San Diego Air & Space Museum, located in Balboa Park, and the tour guide was incredible (however, he was not employed by the museum, he was someone who’d worked in the industry). We’ve been to the Air & Space museum at least ten times since Keith was born. It was under renovation for years, and it’s finally done. It’s definitely not the same museum now as it was when Keith was little — they’ve crammed a lot more in. If you’re close to San Diego and haven’t been since the remodel was completed, we think it’s a worthwhile visit (and it’s free on the second Tuesday of most months for San Diego residents; however, the city is going to start charging for parking in Balboa Park in 2026).
The other was the Museum of Illusions, which was relatively new business in downtown San Diego, part of a chain that has opened across the country. It was neat to learn the secrets to many of the tricks done in movies and we took a lot of fun photos. We brought one of Keith’s friends with us.
That said, we wouldn’t recommend it. First of all, the business model made us uncomfortable. Tickets were about $35 for people 13+ if you bought them online or about $45 if you bought them in person. The system would not allow you to purchase tickets online unless you allowed all cookies and data tracking, including across other platforms. Clearly, they made money selling data. Even at $35, we felt like it was outrageously expensive for what it was. We went through the whole museum in less than an hour, and the majority of that time was spent getting the poses for the photos just right. The information presented was wasn’t particularly insightful, and there wasn’t much in there that would be expensive to maintain/operate. We’ve been to so many amazing museums recently that kept us occupied for hours with incredible information and/or had higher operation costs, yet were less expensive than this one. We feel like all in all it was poor value for the money — we basically paid $140 for some cool photos.
We are also sad to report that every time we go back to San Diego, another one of our favorite food places has closed. None were because of lack of customers. Last year, one of Christi’s favorite mom & pop coffee places, Lion, had a Starbucks ask to lease a spot in the same shopping center under the terms they kick out Lion. Lion apparently couldn’t find a location to move to and closed. Earlier this year, our favorite pizza place, Pummaro, had a corporate entity buy the building and triple the rent, forcing them to close. And on this visit, our favorite smoothie place, North Side Shake Shack, closed because of a leasing issue with a big corporate entity. We went to their closing down party. The tiny shop, parking lot, and sidewalk near the shop was packed with people who were all so sad about losing yet another wonderful pillar of the community.
This morning, we flew back to Baltimore. The trip was uneventful. We didn’t rent a car and took a ride share back to the boat.