When I was researching San Diego to see what we’d do here, I was getting bored of looking at TripAdvisor and looked to some travel blogs for some semi off-the-beaten path ideas. One of these ideas was what was labeled “the seven bridges walk,” which was supposed to be an interesting walk around the city or what the travel blogger called “an urban hike.” There are few changes in elevation, and the walk takes you to seven (actually eight if you count *all* of them) pedestrian bridges through the city. I thought it sounded like it could be different, so I put it on our list. And then as we went on it, I realized how annoying it was.

Not only was it a seemingly meaningless “hike” with little interesting to see, but it even backtracked and made us walk across a bridge… to then walk right back across it again to where we came from. What kind of “hike” is that?! If you ever try looking for “different” things to do in San Diego, by all means avoid this “walk” completely!

We would have been better off sticking with wandering around Balboa Park.

We’re spending a long weekend here since Chris was here for work this week, and the main thing on my list was to eat, eat, and eat. Of course, the ocean and sunsets also excited me, but San Diego screams Mexican food to me, and I barely remembered any of the food I ate the last time I was in San Diego, which was almost 18 years ago. Chances are that it wasn’t that good and was mostly touristy, too.

Last night when I came in, Chris took me to the Marriott Marquis hotel restaurant, where I hesitantly ordered the California wet burrito on the menu because I was craving burritos. I wasn’t sure what to expect of it until it arrived, but when it did and I took my first bite, I was thoroughly satisfied: the steak was grilled and cooked perfectly, and it was stuffed with guacamole, sour cream, and even French fries that managed to retain their crisp. This was a darn good burrito for a hotel restaurant.

Today for lunch, after waiting about half an hour, we went to a no-frills hole-in-the-wall restaurant in a more run down area of San Diego. We walked through tents and tents of homeless people to get there. The restaurant reminded me so much of the places I’d eaten at in Mexico — the plain tables, the minimal signage for the food, the cheap white plastic chairs. We had crispy chicken tacos, flautas, a tamale, and a “small” (it was quite large) helping of rice and beans with house-made flour tortillas. I usually don’t want flour tortillas, but these were the best and softest I’d ever had with just a slight char. This place couldn’t have been any better: they made all their own tortillas, made all the tacos to order, gave you ample cotija cheese, cilantro, limes, and onions, and even soaked chunks of pork fat into their hot sauce. And our massive lunch cost $15 total. It was like we robbed the place.

I wish we had Mexican food this delicious in Manhattan. I will be salivating about these meals for a long time.

I was headed toward my gate for my San Diego-bound flight this afternoon at JFK airport when I noticed two girls who couldn’t have been older than 13 checking their boarding passes and loudly speaking to each other. “They just announced they are boarding executive platinum and platinum fliers,” one of the girls said. “We’re platinum, so we should board now, too.” There wasn’t even a semblance of a line, just a big crowd in front of the “priority” and “main” aisles to board the flight, so I rushed ahead of them into the priority line, scanned my electronic ticket, and got on the plane.

As I sat on the plane, I thought about how crazy it was that these two girls who were barely teenagers had platinum status on American Airlines; that’s at least 50,000 miles flown each year, assuming economy class tickets and that we’re going by mileage only. I just started getting this level of status in the two years, and that was when I was 28. When I was 13, I had only boarded one dinky flight, and that was from San Francisco to Las Vegas. I wondered if they argued about their upgrades and tracked their frequent flier status all the time, too. It’s certainly a life I never had when I was that young. I also wonder if they try to talk about platinum status and frequent flier privileges with their peers, who have no idea what the big deal is and what all these terms even mean. Maybe one day I will have children who are like that, all because of the privileges that their mommy and daddy gave them.