With Drena off for home and Andy off work for the week, it was time to start thinking of what we wanted to show Andrew while he was in San Diego. During our travels the week before we’d seen billboards announcing that the Body Worlds exhibit was at the Natural History Museum here. I’d seen it on a trip to New York City a few years back, but neither of the guys had gone to it. So I gave them two choices: Body Worlds or the Zoo. Dead bodies or cute animals. Boys being boys, I think it’s pretty obvious the one they chose.

So off to the museum we went. the exhibit is actually kinda cool for the most part, though there are parts that I find disturbing. Regardless, it’s a really educational experience. And, after seeing the smoker’s lung, makes me glad that Andy and I are going to quit smoking soon (more on that in another post). The museum happens to be located in Balboa Park, so once we were done there we decided to walk around a little. I’m really glad we did, too, because even though I’ve driven to this area of the city dozes of times I’d never actually walked around here. I definitely want to go back as there are a few more museums down here that would be interesting to check out.

Since we’d already done the dead bodies, the next day it was my turn to decide the plan and I decided it was time to see cute and cuddly animals at the San Diego Zoo. I’ve been to the Zoo a bunch of times but I always enjoy going back, if only to see my favorite animal, the Western Lesser Panda. This panda might not be as recognizable as the black and white ones, but I think they are much cuter. Unfortunately, the little guy was chilling in the shade away from the heat that day, so I wasn’t able to get a good photo like the last time. But at least I was able to see him. And of course afterwards we went to see the Giant Pandas. There were only a couple of them out that particular day, but that is because one of them was pregnant at the time and had been pulled from the exhibit. Since then, she’s had the baby, but they won’t be back for viewing until the cub is five-months old.

The most exciting thing about this trip to the Zoo, though, was seeing the new elephant habitat. The first time I’d ever gone to the San Diego Zoo, back in 2004, the one thing that upset me about it was that it seemed like the poor elephants didn’t have any room. Totally not true anymore. Now they have a huge area to run around in. And because they have more space to roam, you can get a lot better photos of them.

Of course, we didn’t just see the bears and elephants while we were there. We covered almost the entire park, including the reptile house, the African animals and the Arctic animals. Due to the heat, though, a lot of the animals were resting in the shade. So it wasn’t the best trip to the Zoo ever, but it was still fun.

For our last day of touristy events before Andy had to return to work we hit up the one place everyone must go to when visiting San Diego: Sea World. We’d planned this for Saturday so that Charles and Daniel could join us. Luckily for us, military gets in free. Unfortunately, that meant Andrew still had to pay, though at least he got to pay the cheaper rate for being with us. We basically did all the same things we’d done the last time, including seeing the Shamu show, the dolphin show, petting a stingray and checking out the arctic animals. We didn’t get to pet the dolphins, though, because they were being a little shy, but otherwise it was a pretty enjoyable day. We also got to check out the sea lion show, which was just really funny.

This really concluded our visits to the typical tourist spots of San Diego. After three days of being on the go in the summer heat we used Sunday as a day to relax and recover. And figure out all the fun stuff Andrew and I were going to do the rest of the week.