San Diego Sunset at La Jolla

Sub-title: blogging on the road.

La Jolla Beach Sunset

I started this blog sitting in the San Diego airport blogging with my ASUS Transformer pad. It was not an easy go as the first issue encountered was that the blogger tool wouldn't upload my awesome sunset photo so I had to complete the upload at home that night. "Typing" is also a lot slower on these pads than a keyboard. (I've been typing for a  living since 1978.) Still, it was nice to be able to spend some of my wait writing. In the end, the pad/browser couldn't handle more than three paragraphs of text so I saved it and finished the blog at home. Blogging on the road with this pad is not as effective as it should be and needs work!

Friday after my day-long meeting in San Diego I sat, bored, in the hotel lobby, when it occurred to me that there was enough daylight left to go to the beach. So I decided to jump in my rental car and see the sunset from the nearest beach. A google maps search for public beach showed La Jolla Shores beach nearby. (I told the guy sitting next to me on the flight to San Diego that I would be staying near 'La Jol-la' and he said, "Oh, you mean, 'La Hoy-ya'." You would think a native Texan would know how to pronounce La Jolla. But then we Texans pronounce the Llano River with a 'La', not the 'Ya' sound. )

I arrived at the beach with 40 minutes left until sunset so I walked along the beach to get some light exercise. Along the way I took pictures and picked up a pretty rock along the way. As I got to the south end of the beach I found myself standing at the entrance of a seafood restaurant I had looked up earlier in the day. "This day is turning out great!" I thought to myself.

By then the sunset displayed its stunning hues through the remnants of earlier storm clouds as you can see from the photo above. As the sun sank lower though, the onshore breeze rapidly chilled the air to the point that I stood shivering before that georgious display of nature. I determined to stick it out through the whole sunset, cold or not. Fortunately, as the sun finally set, I turned to immediately enter the restaurant and warm up with a glass of red wine and a Cod Fish dinner.

I noticed that folks were eating huge bowls of black mussels but I had never tried them before. So I wound up the courage to ask the bartender if he could bring me a sample and he obliged by bringing out a bowl of four mussels. Wow! What an explosion of wonderful flavor! They were steamed and served in a bowl of slightly buttery seafood broth with leek, onion, red chilli peppers, and other spices. If I am so fortunate to go back to San Diego, I'll definitely stop at The Shores Restaurant at La Jolla to order a full serving of Steamed Carlsbad Black Mussels.