Historic San Diego

We drove down after lunch on Saturday and hit Old Town San Diego on the way in. (More Highlander Grog!) I could swear I don’t remember having trouble finding it before, but the last few times it’s been hard to get to even following a map. At least we managed better than we did in December, when we ended up several miles inland before we could find a place to cross the inlet.

I don’t remember much going on the last time we were there, but this time Old Town was in full-on living history mode, complete with tour guides dressed up in 1800s outfits and a horse-and-buggy ride.

I’d booked the Courtyard San Diego Downtown because it’s literally next door to the House of Blues. It took a while to negotiate the one-way streets, but once we arrived, we stepped inside and were blown away by the lobby. It turns out that the hotel used to be the building for the San Diego Trust & Savings bank. After the bank closed in the 1990s, Marriott bought it and converted it to a hotel. The vault, safe deposit rooms, and other rooms on the first floor became a conference center, and the offices on the upper floors became guest rooms. They’ve preserved as much of the old look of the place as possible, down to keeping the mail slots on the former office doors. (Don’t worry, they’re blocked.)

We ate dinner at Chopahn (6th Ave. near F St.), an Afghan restaurant we first visited during last year’s Comic-Con. It was empty when we got there, which I hope was just because we were there on the early side, because the food is great. Another couple arrived while we were eating, but they were the only people we saw other than the waitress. She had started pushing tables together as if they were expecting a larger party later on.

After dinner we wandered the Gaslamp district for a while. I kept making notes of where various hotels or restaurants were located. Eventually I realized I was basically scouting for Comic-Con next month.

Around 7:00 we made our way to the House of Blues.

Concert

That’s when we discovered that we’d been under a misapprehension about the nature of the venue. The only House of Blues we’d been to before was the one in Anaheim at Downtown Disney. It’s a big room with a stage, a balcony, and bars around the edges. I expect the main hall here was probably the same, but Butterfly Boucher was playing the “small room.” I assumed that meant a smaller room of the same type, but really it meant there was an 8-foot-wide stage in the dining area of the bar (the “Voodoo Stage”). Which would have been great if we hadn’t just had a huge dinner. So we ordered drinks, sat and talked, and eventually ordered some sweet potato fries and nibbled.

Note for next time: Arrive at the printed time, grab a table and order dinner there.

From the back of the stage to the edge of the bar can’t have been larger than our living room, and we don’t have a very big living room. It was like listening to someone play at a coffee house, only with better acoustics and most of the people were there to hear them sing. It was a huge contrast to the last time we saw Butterfly Boucher live, from the top section of what was then the Arrowhead Pond (primarily a hockey stadium).

The first opening act, Dawn Mitschele, played a half-hour set starting at 8:00, and the second, Derek Evans, started after about a ten-minute break. They both had a more country-folk sound, which kind of surprised me, since Butterfly Boucher is more rock. They’re both locals, and I wondered whether they might be following her up to LA.

All through the evening, teenagers in formal wear would come walking down the hall past the stage. It turned out that a high school was holding its prom in the main room at the House of Blues. At one point one woman in the audience (of two who did quite a bit of dancing later on) shouted out, “Hello prom people!”

Butterfly (yes, that is her real name) came out around 9:30, spent a few minutes setting up her equipment (including the loop pedal she jokingly referred to as her backup band) and tuning her guitar, then launched into about an hour-long set of music mostly from the new album — though she did break into “Another White Dash” (with an audience participation section) and “I Can’t Make Me” in the middle.

She clearly hadn’t expected to do an encore, but we all kept applauding, and she came back out to sing “Life is Short,” explaining that she hadn’t rehearsed it in over six months and might need help on the lyrics…

After the show we waited in line to meet her, bought a copy of the CD which she signed, talked to her for a few minutes and posed with her for a photo.

Nightlife

After the meet-and-greet, we headed down to the Ghirardelli shop. Ever since the one in South Coast Plaza closed, I have this thing where if I’m in a city with a Ghirardelli store, I have to go there. Neither of us was up for dessert, but they do have a wider selection of their chocolate than you can find in the grocery store.

As typical for a Saturday night, 5th Avenue was absolutely packed with people of all ages and levels of dress going to and from clubs, bars, and restaurants. We dodged over to 6th street on the way back up, but even then ran into a huge crowd around Sin Niteclub [sic] and the Double Deuce. Through the latter bar’s windows we could see a guy trying to ride a mechanical bull. Some of the women we saw walking around had given up on their shoes and were barefoot. Though walking barefoot on the streets of any major city doesn’t sound like a great idea, no matter how much your feet hurt. Eventually we made it back to the hotel.

Sunday Morning

Cafe 222 (2nd Ave. and Island) has quickly become one of our standard spots for breakfast in San Diego, at least when we’re staying downtown. Afterward we hit the farmer’s market (every Sunday morning at 3rd Ave. and J St. — take note, Comic-Con attendees) where we picked up some blueberries and cherries to bring home. Nothing much in the way of stores were open yet, and we had make it up to the LA area for lunch, so we checked out, made another quick stop at Old Town to look for a store we’d stumbled on last December, and got back on the road.

More photos at Flickr, mostly Old Town and some weird stuff in the Gaslamp area.

We had lunch at El Fandango in Old Town, then wandered around the shops for a bit. By now we’ve seen most of the exhibits and museums. But the San Diego House of Coffee and Tea is a must-visit stop, if for no other reason than to pick up some Highlander Grog. We also grabbed some hot coffee to walk around with, since it was gloomy with occasional drizzling. (I later noticed a sign in the Gaslamp area that said “Umbrellas $9.95. When Raining, $19.95.)

They had set up period tents and wagons around the grounds, mostly in the courtyard with the flagpole made from the ship’s mast. One of the shops we visited was the mineral & gemstone store, which I’ve always liked visiting even back when I was a kid. And right up front, they had the hugest trilobite fossil I’d ever seen, around a foot long.

After a few hours, we drove into downtown San Diego and checked into the Omni Hotel. I’d never stayed there before, but it’s highly sought-after among attendees at Comic-Con because it’s right across the street from the convention center. Our room had a view of the end of the convention center, which will shed a little light on the size of the crowds.

The building at the lower right, with the sideways cylinder structure, is one end of the San Diego Convention Center, near Hall H. See that courtyard/sculpture garden between it and the Hilton? Imagine it full of people, in a long line snaking back and forth, waiting to get into a mega-major-media event like Heroes or Twilight.

A few notes about the Omni: The rooms and view are very nice. The staff is very helpful. The person arranging everything had set us up with late checkout, and I couldn’t remember what time it had been set for, but when I called, they just asked me what time I needed. Amenities are quite nice: there’s a DVD player, a well-stocked minibar fridge, a safe in the room, even a spare ethernet cable in case you forgot yours.

But there are some things that just don’t make sense. For instance: The bathrooms have no towel racks, so you have to set your hand towel in a clump on one of the shelves, where it won’t get dry. And the bathrooms have wooden blinds which can be opened to let in light — but they don’t close tightly enough to muffle sound.

Anyway, Sunday morning we slept in. The sun had come out, though it was partly cloudy all morning. I started out on a quick trip to Ralphs (10 minutes each way) with a sweater and jacket, had removed the jacket by the time I got back, and tossed the sweater when I got back to our room. When we went out to eat later, I just took the jacket, and as the sun passed behind clouds and wind kicked up and died down I kept wanting to put the jacket on, take it off, put on the sweater I’d left at the hotel, stick with the T-shirt, and so on.

I couldn’t help but compare the Gaslamp District today with the way I’ve seen it during conventions. It was a lot less crowded! We stopped at a Farmer’s market on Third St., where we picked up some fresh bread, raspberries, and a companion for a hair stick that Katie had found at a glass-maker’s shop near Old Town.

We caught a late brunch at Cafe 222, which we’d discovered this past summer. (Side note: your Flash-only website, however stylish, is completely useless when viewed on a mobile phone — even a modern one like an iPhone or G1. Have you considered putting at least your hours in plain old ordinary HTML?) I ate way too much, but it was basically two meals.

After brunch we stopped at It’s a Grind to pick up some coffee for the road and went back to our room, narrowly missing a parade if the signs on Fifth St. were to be believed. I took a couple of photos out the window now that the scene was better lit, then we grabbed our stuff, checked out, and headed back north.

I’ve been to a couple of It’s a Grind locations over the past few years, and decided to do some Internet searching for other coffee places in Downtown San Diego.

First, the chains:

It’s a Grind – highly recommended.

• 1603 India St. (India & Cedar in Little Italy, near trolley stop)*
• 690 First Ave. (1st & G, across from Ralphs, near Horton Plaza)
• 10th & J St. (marked as Coming Soon on website)

Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf

• 160 W. Broadway (Broadway & Front, near Horton Plaza)
• Also inside the Ralphs at 1st and Market

No sign of Kelly’s or Peet’s, and of course Diedrich is gone. Though Starbucks has 15 locations plus the Seattle’s Best in the Gaslamp Borders.

I found a couple of lists at San Diego Coffee Houses and String Beans. I’m not sure how many of them are actually downtown, but these appear to be:

Seaport Coffee and Fudge Factory

• 849 West Harbor Drive

Twiggs Coffeehouse*

• 702 Ash Street (Ash & 7th)

Brickyard Coffee & Tea

• 675 W G St (between 6th Ave & 7th Ave at the Seaport Village trolley stop)

If you get out to Old Town San Diego, I highly recommend stopping by the San Diego Coffee and Tea House. Seriously consider picking up a bag of Highlander Grog to take home.

* Not near convention center, but still downtown & near hotels.

So, are there any San Diego natives reading? Any suggestions–especially for places within walking distance of the convention center?

And it was just down the street from our hotel. We walked past it every morning on our way to the trolley station and every night on the way back. I’d thought about visiting it just out of historical interest, but our days were pretty much taken up by Comic Con.

At least that explains why people were wandering around the place with flashlights and cameras at 11:30 last night.