San Diego trip

This morning we were up early as usual, and Cathy & Kevin arrived with breakfast! Cathy had made the most delicious'French toast casserole', much like our bread and butter pudding, but even more delicious! Go Cathy!! She knew Aidan doesn't eat cheese, so she just alerted him to the fact that she had added cream cheese to it - thinking of course that he wouldn't regard cream cheese as cheese at all.
Aidan had fruit for breakfast ;-)
After breakfast  we went to San Diego, with Cathy driving. On the way we passed the amazing Camp Pendleton. It's a military training camp to prepare troops for going to Afghanistan. The terrain looked just right for that kind of training. It's a vast expanse of desert-like hills & valleys.
In San Diego we went to Seaport Park. We strolled around for a bit and then went to see the highlight of our trip: The Midway, and old aircraft carrier. It was an enormous ship! We did a self-guided tour. Wouldn't like to be living in one of the enlisted men's bunks! They were so cramped together, but also we noticed they were less than 6ft long - God help any tall guys.

The planes and helicopters on the flight deck were fascinating, and there were ex-servicemen (who had worked on the ship) giving talks about various features of the operations. We listened to one describing the process of launching an aircraft from the ship - launched by steam powered catapult! He described the role of each member of the crew on deck, and the tight time-frame in which they had to ensure everything was exactly correct; such as the weight of the plane, taking into account the fuel it had spent while waiting for the launch, the rough seas, the weather conditions, and the fact that it might be in total darkness that they were preparing for the launch!!

What a fascinating day of military history!!! It's best not to try to see a whole city in a day, so we'll save other aspects of San Diego for another visit!!

Wine tasting tomorrow in Temacula...