Almost a lazy start to the day as we planned to leave at 9.30am for the drive to Coronado Island. In fact, it was a very lazy start as Karen forgot to set her alarm and didn’t wake up until gone 8.30am. Does she think she’s on holiday or something?
So, it was nearer to 9.45am when we pulled out of the Batcave and drove the short distance to the very lovely Coronado. As soon as we drove across the large curved bridge onto the island, it just had a lovely vibe about it. Something I couldn’t really put my finger on, but we felt it was our type of place, just as we had on our only other visit a few years ago.
We found some free parking, which was pleasing, in the centre of the main street and headed on foot towards the famous Hotel del Coronado. As we approached, the hotel—famed for having Some Like It Hot filmed there—looked and felt like a Disney hotel, which is rather ironic as many Disney hotels were actually inspired by it. We also discovered that Frank Baum wrote three of the Wizard of Oz books whilst staying here.
The hotel is really plush and quality oozes from every corner—and so it should at around $1,000 per night. We wandered around the hotel and into the lobby. We openly laughed at some of the prices in the hotel shop.
Karen was in need of coffee, as she may have mentioned once or a hundred times. We found a lovely table outside Enzo’s in the hotel whilst she fetched herself a coffee, me a tea and a bottle of Coke Zero for the bargain price of £17.
Still, it was extremely pleasant just sitting there soaking up the atmosphere and wondering how all the guests had come into enough money to stay there, and then wondering even more who had paid the extra to access the even posher, members-only areas. We also decided that money doesn’t necessarily buy class, as the table next to us were guzzling a bottle of Chandon out of wine glasses rather than champagne flutes. We tutted.
There were lots of Mexicans wandering around wearing their football shirts ahead of the match against England later that day. I was all for shaking their hands and wishing them good luck, but Karen thought that might come across as a little condescending.
The place and the views, though, were picture perfect.
We walked down to the stunning beach, one that could genuinely give Gorleston a run for its money. Neil and I wandered out to the giant Coronado Beach lettering marked out in the dunes—something that can really only be fully appreciated from the air.
Being here reminded us how incredibly fortunate we are to be able to do things like this, and it is still something we never take for granted. Considering where we both came from, it is the result of hard work, determination and, yes, a little luck in being in the right place at the right time. We fully intend to carry on doing as much of this as we possibly can for as long as we’re able.
For lunch Karen had spotted a Panera Bread near where we had parked the car. The food was very good, although I had very little change from £50 afterwards.
We couldn’t agree on where to go next, so I took matters into my own hands and drove us to the Cabrillo National Monument. That turned out to be an excellent decision.
Again, this wasn’t our first visit, but it was every bit as good the second time around. Better still, because it was still the holiday weekend, the admission fees had been waived.
The views across the bay towards San Diego from the visitor centre were spectacular, to say the least. We walked up to the Cabrillo Monument, where we discovered that Cabrillo was, in fact, Spanish rather than Portuguese as we had previously believed. A bit of a shame really, as I think the local Portuguese club had contributed towards his rather splendid monument.
We then walked up to the lighthouse, which was slightly disappointing as we weren’t allowed up into the light itself. However, the views back across the Pacific and over the area known as the Whale Highway were mesmerising.
Back in the car, we drove down to the tide pools, which involved another short walk to the low cliffs where the waves were crashing below. We sat there for a while simply breathing in the view.
However, we were now on something of a timetable as we wanted to get back to watch the England match, due to kick off at 5pm local time, which left little opportunity to buy some provisions, including dinner for that evening.
We drove to Trader Joe’s, the first one Karen and I had ever visited. We were very impressed, even if we were in rather a hurry. Whilst at the wonderfully laid-back checkout we learnt that kick-off had been delayed by an hour, which meant we could slow down a little.
Back at the house, the delay gave us time to cook dinner—fish and chips for Karen and me, whilst Neil had a Detroit-style pizza—as well as giving me time to figure out how to use the VPN to cast the BBC iPlayer coverage onto the large television. I got there in the end and it all worked perfectly.
Without rerunning the whole match, it was an exciting game and provoked plenty of debate over the VAR decisions. I was delighted to see England go through but disappointed that my sweepstake team had gone out.
Karen and I cracked open a couple of small cans of Prosecco we had bought from Trader Joe’s whilst Neil enjoyed a beer. I’m always nervous about drinking over here because of their zero-tolerance attitude to drink-driving, so I made doubly sure that nobody wanted to go anywhere after the match.
We watched some of the post-match analysis simply because we could, then caught up with a few other things before retiring for the night.
