After two full days of being a tourist in San Diego, I had a day off yesterday and spent it sipping coffee in the local coffee shop and reading. Today (Sunday) was spent at Balboa Park. At 1200 acres it's half as big again as Central Park in New York, making it the USA's largest urban park. What a place!!! The buildings all have a very strong Spanish influence having been built for the 1915 Panama-California Expo (the world's first World Fair) to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. There are 15 major museums in the park, several performance venues, beautiful gardens and the San Diego Zoo. It also houses an international village that has houses from countries all over the world opened to the public on a Sunday with samples of their local food etc. It was very interesting and typically 'yummy'.

I visited the Timken Museum of Art in the park and viewed all the paintings you can see from this link. I learnt a bit more about Rembrandt and saw some of his etchings from the period in his life just after he went bankrupt. He had a very sad life really. He lost three children in early infancy and then his wife died and left him her worldly wealth on the condition that he didn't remarry (cheeky hey). He then loved and lived with his former housekeeper who was pregnant with his child and the Calvanists (I think Presbyterians of the time) declared her "the whore who lived with the painter Rembrandt".

Also attended about a quarter of the free 1 hour weekly Spreckels Organ concert. Wow......4,530 pipes! Certainly makes Brisbane City Hall's organ look small. All in all a great place but I would have needed at least a week to just have a 'quick look' at everything on offer.

Board Radiance of the Seas tomorrow and am looking forward to heading for Mexico with drink in hand and son at my side, to watch the sun "set" rather than "rise" over the water.