Tijuana/San Diego - Day 4

Today started off slowly, as we were all recovering from yesterday. Sandra slept in, as Evan was awake for an hour early in the morning, while I ensured all our pictures were downloaded onto the laptop. It also gave me time to add some pictures to the blog and to Facebook. I wanted to expand what we did at SeaWorld, but ran out of time. Maybe I'll update yesterday's post after I finish this post.

We went out for lunch at a taco stand in Rosarito, so I have now had an official Mexican taco. The stand had a wood grill where they cooked the meat and peppers. When the meat was done, it was chopped up and placed on a soft tortilla with beans, tomatoes and guacamole. It was very good, though it wasn't spicy. I found out later that there were peppers available to put on the taco, which would have made it a lot spicier. We also had quesadillas, which were a lot like the tacos, just with the beans and guacamole replaced with cheese.

After lunch, we drove over to the beach and showed Xander and Evan the ocean for the first time. I stuck Evan's hand in the water, while Sandra did the same for Xander. At one point, Colette had walked out towards the waves and Xander started to follow her. As she was standing in an area where waves regularly arrived, I told Xander to come back to me, but he didn't listen. A bunch of water then arrived - Colette walked away from it, but Xander stood rooted to the spot, even as she tried pulling him along with one arm (as she was holding Jordan with the other). Xander ended up getting his legs fairly wet, as did Colette and myself. Everyone else took that as an opportunity to roll up their pant legs and wade in the ocean, while I stayed behind guarding our stuff and holding a sleeping Evan. We finally left and returned home to change everyone's clothes.

Once everyone was dry, we went to a market to do a little shopping. I wasn't looking to buy anything, but I guess my wife was. She looked at some jewelry, but most of it was too expensive. However, at the one shop she was able to get the price for a necklace to $120 USD, down from the starting price of $500 for the necklace and matching earrings. She decided to buy the necklace at that price, so we did, though she really has no idea whether it was a bargain or not. Regardless, she now owns a very pretty necklace. I tried to get Xander excited about a rain stick, but he didn't want one. Instead, he wanted a ukelele, so I bought him one of each, though I bought a cheap ukelele and not the real nice one that the lady also showed me.

We wandered around the market a bit while Rick and Colette continued to shop, but Evan was extremely cranky, and I was not interested in shopping in such a high pressure situation. The shop owners would pounce on you the moment you walked by and try to convince you to enter the shop. Once you were in the shop, it was extremely difficult to leave without having something forced on you. One guy kept putting a hat on Rick's head to try and get him to buy it. Given that everything that was for sale was touristy junk, I didn't feel like repeatedly refusing to buy things just to browse.

We then did some grocery shopping and returned home for "Mexican" spaghetti and meat sauce, in that we made and ate the spaghetti in Mexico. Tomorrow, I believe we are headed to Ensenada, but I'm not sure exactly what we are going to see and do.