Tuesday, September 7, 2010

San Diego Day 2 - Organic Day with Mother Earth's Living Creatures

We started our Sunday morning heading to the La Jolla Farmer's Market, just 15km north of downtown San Diego. While it sounds far to go just for a farm market, the commute took only about 15 minutes as the drive was mainly via the highway.

Jen's main reason to go to this market was to check out the Cravory a company started by three young men who baked some really yummy cookies. How good you say? These are the "Chanel" of cookies and were good enough to be part of the Emmy Gifting Suites for the celebs. We tried Red Velvet, Peanut Butter Overload and Banana Cream Pie. These amazing cookies are the best that Jen has ever had. Soft, chewy, yet dense and rich with flavor. After going the Portland Farmer's Market we enjoy visiting Farmer's Markets to get a sense of the community and to hang out with the locals.

We also ate mango and breakfast pita. There was this stand that sold fresh mango and/or papaya cups and they add chili powder, seasalt and lemon. This stand was a cash cow!

J&J tidbit: Cravory does not have a storefront at this time of posting. They primarily sell online, but also sells at the Sunday La Jolla Farmer's Market. They can customize 950 types of cookies.

It was then off to the San Diego Zoo, in historical Balboa Park. Not only does this large park house the zoo it also has many museums.



When I was young, I always enjoyed visiting the zoo and seeing all its animals.

But now that I'm older, will the feeling be the same? I'm not sure about enclosing animals in a small, enclosed space would be fun for an animal. But then I guess the Zoo advocates the educational aspects, and is helping endangered species.

We first rode the double-decker bus which is a 35 minute tour ride that takes you throughout the different areas of the zoo.

We rode the Skyfari which is a 'gondola-like' ride that takes you from the south end of the park to the north side.

We visited the polar bears first. The bear in the enclosed tank was quite playful.



We stumbled upon a hidden gem of an exhibit where there was no lineup. It was located around the corner from the main Giant Panda Research Center where there was a half an hour lineup where they corral you quickly through the panda viewing. It appeared to be the exit of the main center. Found out it was only usually open to the volunteers but was open to the public for a temporary period. It housed Panda Bear Zhen Zhen. We admired her for 20 minutes with only a handful others. She put on a show for us as you can see from the photos.



These bears makes you feel so warm and fuzzy and make all your worries go away. We then lined up for half an hour to visit the rest of her family.


One can spend the entire day at the zoo. We were there over 6 hours and these other animals were also the highlights.




J&J tidbit: Though the SD Zoo is the most famous it is not the biggest in the world. The zoo in Berlin can boast for having the most species of wildlife and the zoo in Australia for being the largest.

For dinner we headed to a Vietnamese restaurant called Phuong Trang. The food is comparable to Pnom Penh but the menu is more diverse and the restaurant is double in size and yet still extremely busy. We found deep fried garlic butter chicken wings that were comparable to Pnom Penh. Though it didn't come with the sauce we made it ourselves with the juice from the extra limes we had from the Pho, white pepper and salt. I think we discovered the secret sauce!





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