San Diego

Arriving in San Diego is amazing as the airport is right in the city so the tall buildings seem very close. Unfortunately it was cloudy over the Rockies so the only feature I saw during the flight was the Salton Sea.

We are staying at La Pensionne in Little Italy - about 30 minutes walk from the convention centre. (The photo shows the view from my window.) I was down at registration at 7.30am on Saturday to get my registration sorted as the on line had not registered me. While in an organising mode we found the railway station and organised our Amtrak ticket so are ready for the next leg on Wednesday.

There are 550 participants at the Education Users Conference from 22 countries and 46 states. The sessions have been interesting and it has been good to catch up with old friends made on earlier visits.

Little Italy isn't the quietest quarter of town but the music is pleasant and I have had no problem sleeping, despite music, cars, trains and aircraft. I found Ralph's supermarket had food for breakfast and lunch. There is a need to keep the costs down which is a bit harder in a city. For evening meals we managed to get free food at the conference by attending various events.

Monday was the plenary session for the main user group conference. I believe there are about 15000 people attending. It is difficult in a blog to describe the size of the space and the general atmosphere.

Tuesday Stephanie and I attended some sessions and then did the tourist thing. We went on the light rail to Old Town Historical State Park. Had a good look around and bought a few things. Stephanie had got a bad blister, her sandals are not as comfortable as the ones that broke. She returned to the hotel while I met up with Joseph and with Emily we went over to Coronado Island on the ferry. We walked the mile or so to the main beach-The Pacific - NZ some where off the the SW. We returned on the ferry at sunset - beautiful.

I then joined the other New Zealanders who were attending the conference at a resturant in the Gaslamp Quarter for a dinner hosted by Eagle Technology.

Wednesday was departure day but the train was not until 3pm so in the morning after going into town we decided to take an Old Town trolley tour .This took us through central San Diego, the Gas lamp Quarter, across the bridge to Coronada Island and then to the zoo and Balboa Park.

We got off at the park and had a little look and ate our lunch. You can get on and off the tour and it would be great to have a whole day. We continued on to old town where we left the tour and took the light rail back to our Hotel. We got our gear and took a taxi to the railway. Amtrak was good we travelled with an extended family of Amish people. We got a bus to LAX and then it was onto the convenyor belt. I had a good flight - slept most of the way and was unaware of the security incident until we had extra security from Sydney to Melbourne.