Silent All These Years: San Diego San Diego! That's where I'l go

Saturday, January 05, 2008

San Diego San Diego! That's where I'l go

Next to Palm Springs, San Diego comes a close second to being my favourite California city. It wasn't too crowded and the abundant restaurants, unique neighbourhoods and wicked shopping puts this city in my radar list. San Diego was post cruise and we needed solid ground to walk on and we desperately wanted to shake this constant wobbling feeling we got used to on the ship. Ah, did we ever dine in San Diego. From a free dinner at Nobu to a simple stuffed chicken wing at Royal Thai, I loved every moment of this city. I miss it already. After we docked in San Diego as the cruise ended I was elated to stand on land and have the assurance that I no longer have to see the same people on board again, ever, in my life.

There's outlets and then there's OUTLETS, San Diego had some good shopping but I often compare all outlets to Cabazon in Palm Springs and all retail stores to outlets in Italy. We did well considering it was slow start at first. Found me some nice shoes. These brown shoes I've been eyeing for a while in Vancouver but could not justify the price and voila, Saks Fifth had a 50% sale till noon post Christmas and we barely made it, last 15 minutes and we were clamouring for deals. After a stand off, stare down, claws to the box and out to hurt, we got ourselves awesome footwear. That was quite the adrenalin charged experience!
Now about that free dinner at Nobu. I can still re-live the moment in my mind and wonder how something like that could happen in a place like this. I love all things Nobu, he takes Japanese food to another level. A level that Hapa or even Tojo's could never reach in this lifetime. Anyhoo I digress yet again. This is supposed to be about how to score a free dinner at a fine dining restaurant, ok...ensure you go at a busy time, and the server is running frantically to get to his tables and not being overly attentive, ask to pay the bill and pay by credit, put the card in the folder that is visible to the server, hope to god the server is somewhat challenged and loses the credit card while on route to the counter, returns with colleagues armed with torch light to find something, only to advise you 10 minutes later that the credit card went missing. Then expect the same server to have the audacity to ask you for another credit card since the first one went missing, then the manager approaches to apologize then ask this manager how a server losing a credit card and it was entirely his fault would somehow lead to us providing another credit card again. The manager at this point should apologize and then voila, dinner is comped. Damn, had I known this would happen, I would have had the lobster and 2 more bottles of premium sake LOL.

Lounging at hotel lobby post wine hour

View while having lunch at Hotel del Coronado on Coronado Island

Le Lunch

posted by movetothis @ 11:23 am

2 Comments:

At 4:04 pm, Anonymous said…

Note to myself: when paying for credit card in restaurants, devise ways to snatch the card away without the server knowing, and make a dramatic scene about how the card could be lost.
At 5:23 pm, movetothis said…

lol, that's quite the idea but how can that be done....they actually found the card a day later and called us to pick it up but by then we had already cancelled it so pointless non.