Vacation pictures, Part 1, San Diego

Okay, as long promised, here are a few vacation photos. The first batch is from last weekend in San Diego. After the misery of our Friday travel follies, courtesy of Northwest Airlines, we decided to skip the first day of the USA Sevens rugby tournament and to instead walk up and down Mission and Pacific Beaches in San Diego. The day was pretty cool for San Diego, temps in the mid-50s, but the sky was clear and beautiful.

Here we are on a beachside bench in Pacific Beach:

Our room at the Best Western on Mission Beach promised a "Partial Ocean View". Here's the view. I'd say "partial" is a pretty good description:

We really liked this hotel. It was right on the beach, the hot tub looked out at the surf, and we could hear and watch (partially) the waves whenever we wanted.

Later in the day we sat out on the beach to watch the sunset. This one guy was walking back and forth with a pair of beagles that cracked us up. They were baying and smelling stuff and just having a great old time:

Here's a picture of me enjoying a delicious Sierra Nevada Early Spring Beer. It is cleverly disguised as a travel-mug full of coffee. In the background the dude with the beagles is approaching a big pile of kelp. Katie the Beagle would be in heaven. I dare say she has never smelled anything quite so stinky, nor had such an enormous thing to potentially roll in.

Here's Monique against the seawall, watching the sunset.

As for the sunset? It was a good 'un:

The next day we did indeed go down to Petco Park to watch the final day of play at the rugby tourney. I discovered the real reason that rugby hasn't caught on entirely with kids in this country. It's because our national team's mascot is a scary-looking eagle, seen here about to drop a left hook on an innocent fan with a cute Welsh dragon hat:

Sheesh, why don't we just hire Freddy Krueger to go through the stands and make children cry? (Just kiddin', the eagle was actually very popular around the stadium all weekend.)

The stars of our vacation:

The U.S. team signed autographs while circling the stadium after they were eliminated in the semi-finals, the farthest they've ever made it in one of these international tournaments.

The U.S. barely lost a squeaker in the semifinals to the Argentines, who went on to beat England and win the whole tournament. Watching international rugby is going to be a whole different thing if the U.S. could actually beat somebody.

Here, by the way, are the Argentines, popping the cork on some well-earned champagne.

Next photo stop? Our drive up the coast....