Encinitas - San Diego DSLR June Group Shoot

The group was a little smaller this year compared to last year, but it is always fun to wander around the California seaside town of Encinitas with a few friends.

I was hungry so my first stop was the French bakery for a custard raisin roll and a cup of coffee.

I met back up with most of the group in front of the Boat Houses, and we spent the next 2 hours just wandering around taking pictures and visiting.

Lunch was at Kealani's, a Hawaiian place, their Spam Musubi is pretty good.

Click here to see more shots from this morning in Encinitas with the San Diego DSLR Photo Group.


Click here to see the club's gallery for the Group Shoot.
   

Portuguese Navy Tall Ship N.R.P. Sagres in San Diego - June 8, 2010

The tall ship of the Portuguese Navy, N.R.P. Sagres, is visiting San Diego as part of its 2010 circumnavigation of the world. The ship is open to the public for tours, and we didn't miss the opportunity.

The Sagres was built in Hanover, Germany in 1937, and is the sister ship to the U.S. Navy's tall ship Eagle. Sagres, known as the Albert Leo Schageter when it was built, was captured by the U.S. in 1945 and handed over to Brazil in 1948. From there it found its way to Portugal in 1962 when the Portuguese Navy purchased it to replace its older tall ship.

The Sagres is 89.5 meters long, the main mast is 45.9 meters tall. Total crew is 139. The ship left Portugal on January 19th and will finish its round the world trip at the end of December. While in San Diego it will pick up a compliment of up to 63 Portuguese Naval Academy cadets for the portion of the trip between San Diego and Macau.

We spoke with one of the crew, he was looking forward to their next port-of-call, which is to be Honolulu. He had heard Hawaii was "paradise". We asked him about the casks of wine lashed to the deck. He said that the Portuguese Navy has a long-standing (several hundred years) tradition of taking wine in casks on board ships that sail to the Southern Hemisphere and bringing it back to be further aged and then bottled as a special edition wine. He could not quite explain just what properties the long sea voyage was thought to impart to the wine, but apparently the vintners consider it to be quite special. These casks will be aged many more years upon their return, then bottled and sold as a limited edition to commemorate the voyage. The winery is one of the sponsors of the trip.

The Sagres is tied up next to the San Diego Maritime Museum on Harbor Drive, just north of the submarine USS Dolphin.  The Sagres departs on Sunday June 13th.

Click here to see more pictures from the N.R.P. Sagres and a few other shots from around the San Diego Maritime Museum after dark on June 8th.
  

A Good Day at the San Diego Zoo

We took our nephew Chris and his wife, along with Heather's father, to the San Diego Zoo on Saturday. It was quite crowded, which we had expected, so I dropped them off at the front and went looking for a place to park. It's a good thing I had plenty of fuel, I had to drive around for 45 minutes before I found a spot. They made it down the Tiger Trail and past the hippos before I caught up. It was a good day though, we saw quite a bit.


The pandas were sleeping (which is normal) when we got there, but then the new baby decided to get up and go looking for a snack.

We had equally good luck at the polar bears, where one of them was playing in the water with a large blue ball that he would toss like a basketball up onto the rocks, then grab it as it fell back into the pool and toss it again.

I couldn't get close enough to make the chain link fence completely disappear, there were just too many people in front of me when I took this shot of the lion. It was pretty much a quick snap as I was walking past, just happened to catch it just right.

We hung out with the meerkats for quite a while

The koalas were a lot of fun to watch, this little baby one was climbing all over the place, and the mother was moving more than any koala I've ever seen.

From the koalas we went over the to the mesa where the rhinos and giraffes are, then headed down to what used to be called Cat Canyon, and is now known as Big Cat Trail. It's tough to get a good picture of the big cats, and it's kind of depressing to see them cooped up in those cages, even if the enclosures are fairly big and well landscaped. The mountain lions were napping when we first got there, but then the female decided to get up and move a bit. A few minutes later a woman in a wheelchair came up, and the mountain lion went crazy. She (the mountain lion) was growling, snarling, hissing, salivating and all sorts of other stuff as she tried to stalk the lady in the wheelchair. The woman's daughter pushed her back and forth across the exhibit, and the mountain lion followed intently, never diverting interest for a second. This was one time I really wished I had a video camera.

This peacock was a crack-up, he was doing his best to impress a duck that just wasn't all that interested. 

All in all it was pretty good day for a walk around the Zoo, even with the parking nightmare and the crowds once you got inside. We stopped into some of the lesser visited corners too, and there it was nice and quiet.


Click here to see more from our trip to the San Diego Zoo on Saturday, June 5, 2010.
   

Sea Horses and Jellyfish - Scripps Birch Aquaium

The Birch Aquarium at UCSD's Scripps Institute of Oceanography has a special exhibit of sea horses going right now. Because of the low light levels and all the glare on the tanks they're pretty hard to get a good picture of, but they are a lot of fun to watch.

This first one is a leafy sea dragon. I can't imagine how they came up with that name.

The regular (non-leafy variety I guess) sea dragon looks like something right out of a Dr. Seuss book.

I forgot what these little ones are called, but they look more like what you generally imagine when you think of a sea horse.

The aquarium also has a couple of small but nice jellyfish tanks. These sea nettles sure don't look like something you would want to run into while out swimming.

They have the coolest moray eel there too. His eyes have this really sinister blue look, and they appear to have some sort of membrane over them that makes them look cloudy.

Click here for more images from my short walk around the Scripps Birch Aquarium this afternoon.

  

Ethnic Food Fair at the International Cottages - Balboa Park, San Diego

The Ethnic Food Fair at the International Cottages in Balboa Park is always held on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. It's one of our favorites, and we try to attend each year. This event seems to get bigger every year too, and this year it seemed like everyone and their dog was there.

We did a quick walk around the whole place first, in order to check out what was being offered by each of the countries. After we had checked all of them out, we decided to try the House of Ireland first, the Banger and Champ was excellent. 

The potatoes were served with slices of Irish sausage and carmelized onions. (At this point I should mention that the food photos you're about to see are nowhere near as good as the food itself. There was no place to put anything down or to be able to control the lighting.)

From Ireland we headed over to Argentina, which consistently had the longest lines of the day. Both the Choripan (sausage) and the Spinach Empanadas were excellent. The Chimichurri Sauce on the sausage was great, as was the roll (it had never seen the inside of plastic bag, so it had a nice crust). The only picture I have of the sausage sandwich itself is really bad, so we'll go with Chef Frank cooking them instead.

Next stop was China, where we tried the Dumplings (potstickers) and Green Onion Pancake.

At that point we were thinking it was probably time to take a break, and our plan was to wander down to the Art Museum to check out the new Greek Heroes exhibit. We got as far as the House of England when Heather spotted the Chicken Pies. We started talking with ladies running the booth, and one of them insisted on going to get us some fresh out of the oven pies. She came back a few minutes later, but I could not get her to look up for the picture.

So now we were finally ready to head for the Art Museum for a little break. No photos allowed in the special exhibits, but I did get this one of the fountain in entrance area.

When we stepped back outside this girl asked if I would take a picture of her and a friend with her camera. It was the coolest Polaroid I've seen in a while, and I had to get a shot of the camera.

Time for some desert, back at the Food Fair. First stop was the House of Finland for a Crepe with strawberries and whipped cream, and a glass of cold Blueberry Soup (no picture).

Our last stop of the day, staying with the northern European theme, was the House of Norway, where we had Vaffler, a waffle with jam and sour cream.

We had a nice little talk with the ladies serving the waffles. Like everyone else at the Fair, they seemed to be having a great time.

Click here to see more images from the Ethnic Food Fair at the International Cottages in Balboa Park this afternoon.
  

An Evening in Pacific Beach

Heather and I joined LaRee for an early dinner at Hennessey's in Pacific Beach on Saturday so that we could listen to local singer / songwriter Alyssa Jacey perform. She is definitely worth watching for.

The food at Hennessey's is pretty good too. I had the corned beef and cabbage (and forgot to take a picture). After that we went for a walk along the Boardwalk. In some ways it's changed a lot since I was last there, but in many ways it's still the same. Pacific Beach has always been a collection of "colorful" people and sights.

Heather found a new friend along the way.

I snapped this shot of LaRee while we were waiting for the sun to set.

Pacific Beach might not be my first choice of a beach to walk along, but between the music, the food and the company, we had a very enjoyable evening.

Click here to see more images from our Saturday evening in Pacific Beach.


Click here to learn more about Alyssa Jacey. Be sure to turn your speakers on.