A Tour to Die For...

Not getting a complete fix of fish tacos, I set out for lunch in the Gaslamp Quarter to find some delicious bites. With my book in hand, I sat on the patio of a very popular restaurant, starting off with a salsa sampler and a margarita, and finally doing San Diego proud by having real, hearty fish tacos. I took my time enjoying my surrounding, my food, and most importantly, my drink!

To work off a little bit of my lunch, I walked around the Gaslamp Quarter. I had passed through it the day before on the trolley tour and wanted to check it out on foot. A lot of the buildings were very adorably styled to be a cross of San Francisco row houses and the French Quarter in New Orleans. I wish I had found out the history of the area, but I had a lot on the docket for the day, so sightseeing was my priority!

Next stop was Balboa Park, home to 40 museums and attractions!

They apparently used to use this organ pavilion for broadway shows and live performances. However, as you can see in two of these pictures, the pavilion is located directly below a flight path to the airport. And at this point in the landing process, the planes are low and loud! For this reason, for a couple years, they installed a traffic light for the performers during shows. Green light meant all is well, continue with the play. Yellow light meant incoming plane. When the red light came on, the entire stage performance would freeze as the plane ripped past the stage. When the green light cam on again, the show would start up again at an instance!

I tried to get into the Japanese Gardens, but they were closed for a private event. I got a good feel of them from up above!

Next stop, the Botanical Building! The weekend I was there, they were having an orchid show, so it was even more beautiful then usual I suppose! Among all the orchids, trees, and flowers, there were also Venus Flytraps! 

Next up, San Diego Natural History Museum. Definitely not the best I've ever been to, but it had it's highlights, like an entire level dedicated to skulls.

Right outside the museum is another big fig, the Morton Bay Fig Tree. This one here is the largest in San Diego. I would learn even more information about them later in the evening....

I was in the park for probably three and a half hours going in and out of a lot of the museums and sights, but it was hot, hot, hot, and I needed to find somewhere to cool off. 

This led me to La Jolla, which was about 10 degrees cooler with the breeze coming off the sea. This place is absolutely beautiful. The town has so many restaurants, many with patios to get the full affect of this amazing view. There were many people waiting on the cliffs to see the sun set, kayak tours all around, and seals laying out in the sun! 

And then there's this dummy in the picture below who same into the cove only to get stuck and not be able to swim against the current to get out. Like 20 lifeguards came to fish this guy out. Dumb dumb.

The main highlight of the day was back in Old Town San Diego. I decided to go on a ghost tour because why the heck not? San Diego was the first settled town in California. There is a lot of history in the town and where there's history, there are ghosts!

Our first stop on the tour was a city park, Pioneer Park. This park was located right next to an elementary school, and while classes are out, there was a family celebrating a birthday and having a picnic in the park. Totally normal right? Stand by.

This park is covered in these Morton Bay Fig Trees, originally from Morton Bay, Australia. Their adorable nicknames: The Strangling Tree. Cute, right? Our guide told us that with it's giant roots, the tree will strangle any other type of tree within 18ft of it's trunk and cut off the roots of the other tree until it dies. Adorable!

Remember me saying this park with a family celebrating a birthday was next to an elementary school? Ya, then why are there headstones here? Well, this park used to be a cemetery. Yep. In the far corner of the park are some of the more notable headstones that originally stood in the cemetery. Headstones that belong to the first sheriff of San Diego and his trusty companion/ nemesis, the most popular priest of his time who's church still stands in Old Town, and Elizabeth Taylor! Wait, not the one you're thinking of!

When the city of San Diego decided to turn this area into a park, they took down all but those headstones. They did not, however, take the coffins out of the ground. The park. Next to an elementary school. Filled with bones. Fun, right?! To memorialize the dearly departed after taking their headstones away, all 1000+ souls are remembered by these plaques in the middle of the park.

Driving through the city, we learned the origins of the song "Ring Around the Rosey" (about the plague) and the saying "Saved by the Bell" (having a string tied to your finger that was connected to a bell, so that if you were buried alive, you could pull the bell and be saved.....), we headed back to Old Town. The last stop with our guide was the El Campo Santo Cemetery that I went to yesterday. This was the second cemetery in San Diego with graves belonging to everyone from criminals to young children. The cemetery now is not very large. There are only about 20 grave markers. However, just like Pioneer Park, the city of San Diego decided to develop around it and cover up grave sites. Again, without taking out the coffins. As recognition of some grave sites, there are markers that cross over into the sidewalk and into the streets of Old Town. Three blocks down into Old Town to be exact.

Our guide dropped us off at the Whaley House, the most haunted place in America. That's an actual title they received from not only ghost hunters, but also from the California Landmark Association. The Whaley House was built on what used to be the gallows of San Diego. Boom, right there, potentially angry spirits. Inside, it has a courtroom and a general store. In the general store is a hair wreath (yes, you read that correctly; a wreath made of hair) that had carried in more spirits.

There have been sightings in the dining room of a little girl hiding under the dinner table and our guide said that sometimes, women feel like their hand is being held because this little girl is looking for a mother! In this area, people have also reported feeling like their ankles are being licked... by the house dog.

Many people have said they've seen a spirit looking out these windows into the courtyard and onto the main street of Old Town.

Ok, honestly, these are the first time I'm looking at these pictures since I took them about a week ago. Does anyone else see the figure in the picture on the left all the way to the right next to the crib? I honestly don't know what that is and I don't remember seeing anything like that when I was looking in the room. I'm actually really not having fun writing this because I'm like staring at this picture. Help!

Moving on! There is a theater in the house, original to the build. It was used for shows back in the day and is now used as a changing room for the tour guides. Our guide was telling us that she was getting changed a couple weeks ago backstage and the theater was pitch black. She and another guide started to hear clapping as they changed. Caught off guard, they turned on the lights to the theater. As soon as they turned on the lights, the clapping stopped, but there was no one in the room.... 

After the house tour, we were encouraged to go to the courtyard where there have been lots of sightings. Again, when I was in the house taking the tour, I didn't see anything. Not in person, not on my phone. I'm happy to say nothing turned up in the pictures from outside, but I'm still kind of concerned about the one by the crib. Now, I've effectively freaked myself out. Woo!

Below to the left is the church of the very popular priest buried in Pioneer Park, still standing with a very large congregation. The picture on the right is the Cosmopolitan Hotel that I saw the day before, but wanted to wait to tell you about after this tour! Apparently, back in the day, there was a young woman that had checked in to the hotel. She was there to get married and she was the first in her party to arrive. Her family and her fiance where traveling a distance to get to San Diego for the wedding. Two days before her wedding, she received a telegram that her fiance had been killed while trying to get to California. Distraught, she dressed in her wedding dress and roamed the halls of the hotel, wailing for her loss. The hotel staff went to check on her the next night and she was nowhere to be found. She was never seen again. However, people who stay in the hotel now often report seeing a woman in white roaming the halls at night and hear a woman crying....

All in all, I really enjoyed San Diego even if I am scared right now as I'm writing this. San Diego has a lot of culture and history and I recommend everyone go there! And go on the ghost tour. And tell me if that's a ghost in my picture. Help!

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