Day 42: Let's go Padres, let's go!

Hello San Diego

This is the 3rd time in San Diego for me and it’s definitely one of my favorite Cities in the states, maybe even my favorite one. It has this special charm, in downtown it doesn’t feel like a too big city and the weather feels perfect. Currently we have 23° during the day and 18° in the night. Combined with sun (of course only during the day…😅) it makes such a great and pleasant weather.

Nicole really wanted to see a Baseball game, I was first a bit critical (as always with new things), but agreed and decided to give it a chance. But we weren’t able to book tickets only, we were only greeted by a strange error on the page. So first thing this morning was to go to the Petco Park Stadium and try to buy tickets in Person. This was an easy job and there were seats left, our evening program was set!

Then we started our favorite activity in a new city, just walk around and explore. From the Petco Park, it’s close to the water front, so this was our first “goal”. On the way we spotted Sweet Things Frozen Yogurt and had some shakes there. They were good but filled more then a regular meal, so no lunch for us today :)

We followed the water front all the way until after the USS Midway (which is an great museum) and then started to walk back into downtown.

On the way back we crossed the train station and then were already back at the Hotel. We still had 7 nights unplanned, the ones after San Francisco and before we fly to Hawaii. So we did some researching and planning at the Hotel. We are still unsure which route to take to get back up to Vancouver, but we booked at least 3 nights in Vancouver. So 4 nights are still open.

Then it was time for me to finally run outside again, which was a pleasure. I’m not used to treadmill running and I normally don’t listen to music/podcasts/whatever during running, so indoor running is really boring… But the run here was nice, reminded me of the ones I did in 2018 & 2019.

San Diego Padres vs Arizona Diamondbacks

Freshly showered, the hunger got the better of us and we went out to find something to eat. Our initial plan was the Old Spaghetti Factory, but for some reason we forgot what we learned in Whistler (You have to wait, so better reserve…). We were told that the wait was around one hour, so we baited and searched for something else. “UNION Kitchen & Tap Gaslamp” was close by, reviews were good enough, so we decided to give it a go. I had a Burger and Nicole a Flatbread, both was good and together with the beer the perfect preparation for the game.

As we made it to the Petco Park, it was already getting crowded, but it was never too bad. Which was impressive for a stadium that has a maximum capacity of nearly 50k people. After another beer (the most expensive in my whole life at 16.58 CHF for 3 dl) we grabbed some food and went to our seats.

Not long after, the game started. The people had an interesting dynamic, it was always a coming and going around us. Some people switched place, some went and never came back. But then others came, sometimes for the rest of the game, sometimes just for a short period of time. I’m not big into sports, but it never felt like that at the football games I visited in Switzerland.

At first I wasn’t sure how interesting the game is going to be. And because there is no time limit, I was afraid that it could take forever and not much happens. But it turned out to be quite interesting, even though most of the throws are either Strikes or Balls (Thrown outside of the strike zone and no swing from the batter). So not too much is happening overall, ball thrown but most are not hit, but each time 2 strikes were on one of the Arizona batters, the crowd tensed up. And on each “out”, a little party started :)

So the whole game was entertaining and the over 3 hours it took in the end, were really entertaining. And everything ended with a win for the Padres, so even better!

Pictures

Activities

Run: Hello San Diego peak heat 👍😁