May 10, 2016

May 10  Coronado & Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum

   

  The sky showed its usual “marine layer” grayish clouds that will clear by noon.  We found out that this weather is typical for San Diego mornings in May. The temperature was 17C at 7 and the wind was gentle.  Today there was a variety of fruit yogurt again, but no apples or other fruit to go with the scrambled eggs, pancakes, cereal or three kinds of bread for the usual breakfast buffet.  There was a tour group of about 30 from either China, Japan or Korea which had stayed the night.  They kept to themselves, they may not have been fluent in English.

   Today we took the trolley all the way downtown to 12th and Imperial and connected with the number 901 bus to Coronado.  It took less than an hour and the bus ride was only 9 minutes to the Naval Aviation base on the north end of the peninsula which we observed from the water on yesterday’s harbour cruise. Near the stop where we got off the bus on Third Street and E Avenue, in the small park, we saw a huge 30 meter high Torrey Pine tree with a plaque noting that it was Heritage Tree number 1.  Torrey Pine was the name of a regional street in La Jolla.  It was a pleasant walk through the residential area south of the Naval Aviation base. We had walked about 4 km when we walked down to the beach near the famous Hotel del Coronado. We walked up to hotel from the beach and passed its herb and vegetable garden.  It is a grand hotel over 125 years old. It originally had a huge ballroom that is now the hotel’s arcade of boutiques.  It looks out across Coronado to San Diego and is a massive structure.  The Hotel del Coronado has hosted many famous people in its long history. We continued our walk over to Orange Street where we stopped for coffee at the corner of 10th Street and struck an enjoyable conversation with a retired woman who has lived in Coronado for more than three decades.  She too mentioned the Fort McMurray fire of last week and was happy to hear that residents are able to return there, but was sorry for the people who had lost their homes. She travels to her children’s homes on each coast and has holidayed in Hawaii but still feels there is no better place for things to do and  nice weather year round than San Diego.  She told us that this weather, of cloudy mornings and sunnier afternoons, is typical for San Diego in May.  We continued the walk and stopped at a Vons store to get salads and a pear and an apple for a picnic lunch in the park near the ferry terminal which commemorates the 100 anniversary of the first ferry between Coronado and San Diego in 1886.  By noon the sky was partly cloudy and we found a bench to sit and enjoy our lunch, before catching the small two deck ferry back to San Diego at the dock near the Midway aircraft carrier museum.  The voyage was just 15 minutes. 

  We started our visit to the Midway Museum just before 1 pm and spent four hours exploring four decks of the ship. In the early 1940s, Japan was trying to control western and central parts of the Pacific Ocean and first encountered the US Navy planes based on aircraft carriers in the Battle of the Coral Sea near Port Moresby, New Guinea, which north of the Australian coast. The battle was the first air sea battle in with opponents both using planes from aircraft carriers. A month later another battle raged between aircraft carriers and their planes for the strategic central Pacific Midway Island.  Before the war, it was used as a refuelling stop half way across the Pacific for commercial and private planes.  The USS Midway was launched a week after World War II ended and named after the Battle of Midway Island between the United States and Japan in June 1942 which was won by the Americans.  It was the largest ship in the world at that time and was too big to use the Panama Canal. The USS Midway was decommissioned on April 11, 1992. We learned how sailors and airmen lived on the ship as well as how the planes were launched and landed on the flight deck. There are reconstructed planes and helicopters on the flight deck and some of them can be boarded.  Four hours was just not enough time to understand the operation of the ship and the history of the American Navy planes.

  We left the ship and walked to India Street to find a restaurant for dinner.  We didn’t see anything that appealed to us and remembered that we had seen the Corvette Diner at Liberty Station last night and decided to take the trolley to Old Town then transfer to the 28 bus to go to Lytton Street.  We had walked 14 km and decided to rest our feet.  The Corvette Diner was great fun.  It has a 1950s vibe, there is an old Corvette at the welcoming desk and the tables are arborite in 1950s designs and there are lots of booths. Shakes, malts and floats are prominent at the Soda Fountain.  There is a live DJ playing songs of the era, but the juke boxes are just decorations.  You can request songs.  Our dinners were a Dante’s Inferno burger and fries and a Gidget Greek Salad. While we ate the meal, four of the wait servers performed a lively dance routine. The walk back to the hotel was just 15 minutes and our total distance walked today was 16.1 km.