Paco´s Life: Madrid

California Dreaming: Tijuana & San Diego

17 December 2006 7:59 PM | In California, Nightlife, Travel |

San Diego was the next stop in our route.This nice south Californian city had an added interest because of been the place of residence of an old friend of mine, Sergio. I met this great guy during my Erasmus year at Newcastle (United Kingdom), back in 2003. I would say this Erasmus experience started my need of travelling and living in different places. If I hadn´t done that I wouldn’t probably be in Sweden right and the idea of spending Christmas travelling in the States would be out of the question. But the fact is I did it and since then I could not stop. Once you leave home you just can not be back. Apparently the same thing happened to Sergio, he spent quite a few periods abroad until he got the chance to get to San Diego for teaching Spanish. This is his second year there and it was time for me to pay a visit. The trip from LA was a pain, traffic jams and bad weather got us there much later than expected. At least we did not have too much trouble finding the address and meeting Sergio who was hanging around with a couple of friends, also Spanish teachers. Christian and Enric, another two great guys to add to the collection of characters we found in this trip. The first one gave us accommodation for a couple of days and the second one offered us a very tasty Spanish omelette

Erasmus reunion

Christian, great guy

Wellcome to Tijuana, tequila, sexo y marihuana, Manu Chao says. Well, the truth is that the city seems to be the real chaos. From San Diego we drove to the border, left the car there and crossed walking. In the pocket just a bunch of dollars and the passport, well kept, loosing it would result on not been able to get back to the States. So you pass this mechanical door along with all the Americans looking for getting very drunk and you get into another world. Mexicans all over the place offering taxis, liquor shops, sex shops…As we were going with Sergio who had already been there a few times we knew where the more Mexican and less yanqui area was and there we went. What to say about the place… Plenty of people all over, very loud music, bars everywhere. Absolutely the opposite than what we had experienced in the States, an atmosphere closer to what a typical party area in Europe could be. Appart from that, believe me, there was nothing too extraordinary that night. Maybe that epic moment, right after we got into the first place, when they started playing “La Chispa Adecuada”, one of the best songs made by Heroes del Silencio. The Mexicans got craxy with the song, these guys were very popular there. Appart from that, we could check out that in Mexico every woman has a man behind, looking around like a lighthouse and that, even though we could speak the language we would pay same price as the Americans. But, my friends, this is not USA, here you can party until 6 am and we really appreciated that. Something to remember about that night is the best hotdog I ever ate. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the mexican experience, after all we had heard, it didn’t seem such a good idea to bring a camera with us. However I didn’t really feel the place was extraordinary dangerous, nothing unusual at least, maybe because our friends knew where to go so we didn’t get into the wrong places. In any case, only a few hours there but another country to add to the list.

After the mexican gap it was time to get to know San Diego, nice coast city. We started the visit in the center, the restaurant area and continued to the gay area (Hillcrest). According to the Lonely Planet guide, the reason why there is a gay community in San Diego is that, after the II World War, many soldiers ended up there and, of course, so many men so close… By the way, having this guide is very adviceable for a trip like this. You get plenty of information about the places you are visiting, maps of the main cities and recommendations about accommodation and restaurants which were most of them successful. I would say is a must to buy it. Anyway, San Diego has, of course, a skycrappers downtown and close by there is a reconstruction of a typical western village. Very fake but anyway, it was the tourist attraction and we were tourists so we had to go. Buying the Mexican hat was part of the plan for properly fooling around. After that we went to the beach, the most famous one there is La Jolla but we did not made it so far and stayed in the closest one. Not much to do there in winter and also, for the first time in this trip, we get pretty lost driving around and missed a couple of interesting places because we got there too late. Still, we could get a couple of night pictures of the californian sunset.

For dinner, the locals took us to a great place where you get very full eating meat you cook yourself in a grill they have in the middle of the restaurant. Talking about restaurants in the States, is unbelievable how well you can eat there or, been more precise, how much you eat there. They really load the dishes not like some other places I know (yeah I am been critic with Stockholmagain). It does not matter if the place was Mexican, chinese, Italian…you weren’t hungry afterwards. The prices are affordable and the service is great, all the staff is very friendly and nice and you hardly wait for your meal. There is a trick here though. In the States the customer is supposed to leave tip, between 10 and 20% of the meal. You can get away without leaving the tip but that would be extremely unpolite. The waitress who served the table gets the tip so he/she better be nice. In fact, the basic salary these people get already reflects that they are supposed to get plenty of money in tips, they normally get around 1,5 dollars per hour. If they are reasonably friendly they will highly raise this amount, ending up with a more than decent salary. In my opinion, this is a good system, you give between 10 and 20%, depending on how good you feel they threat you. This way you normally get a very good service, chezcq waiters here wouldn’t make business. The negative thing is that as soon you finish your food they are already looking forward for you to leave so they can give your table to someone else and in some places they tend to rush you. No Spanish after – lunch – talking here.