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Welcome to Old Town San Diego, where you can go back and in time and experience how it was hundreds of years ago.

Now if they use the old prices that would have been swell. LOL!

The historical park doesn’t offer excitement and action much but it’s a great stop for like 2 hours or so. We had time to kill. Sleepy and haggard, we marched on to time-travel even though we don’t know heck about American history. In fact, the park was our crash course with some of this country’s background. Nice to know, right? 🙂

The place is nice but would be so much better if there’s an event. It’s not a lot of fun if you’re just going around looking at history unless you’re into that thing, which I am. I luuuuurrrvve old stuff, hehe.

By observation you’d know that San Diego was greatly influenced by Mexico. But don’t take my word for it, I probably just thought it looked a lot like Antonio Bandera’s movie Zorro. LOL!

Classic atmosphere. 🙂

Click to enlarge pictures and to see notes.

Walking around, we found old school stuff. Old school hotels, courthouses and banks. Typical history but cool nonetheless. We saw an old Wells Fargo carriage. Imagine those times if you want to transfer money to another account. No electric transfer. Do it by the pony express or by Morse-code (yeah you heard right) wire transfer. Express banking had a whole new meaning back then. And if you rob a Wells Fargo carriage, you get to stay first class in the rusty courthouse jail. You’d die of tetanus from rust exposure before you get hanged. No school like old school.

Apparently, San Diego is infested with cacti! Seriously, cacti run the park. I have a creepy feeling they control the park with employees doing their bidding. Tourists will buy them from here. There will be a cactus in every house all over the world. The cacti will take over and absorb all our electricity and we will be forced to use old style transportation like carriages and wire money by morse code!!! Waaaaah!

But seriously dude, they’re like all over the state park. I searched it and found San Diego is home to several cacti sanctuaries and nurseries.

Speaking of alien cacti, I think the troll has been following us in disguise. Ssshhh… The troll was first spotted here.

Of course, what’s another tourist trap without all the trinkets and goodies to take home. They have everything from old school tobacco to luchador (Mexican wrestling) masks to wind chimes and many more stuff that’s only good for paperweight. But hey, tourists should be tourists! I got myself a Mexican dress. Thanks W! (^o^)/

What’s a group of tourist gonna in a tourist trap like this? Take “we were here” pictures!! Here are some of us posing and resting.

Only thing missing would be old-school food. In Japan, we’d go to museums with themed restaurants and they always have some street food that were popular in the old days. That would have been awesome. Me and my roomie love to food-trip. Don’t worry there’s food (just not old-style), you won’t go hungry.

Overall, a great place for easy strolling when you’re a bit tired or if you only have some time to spare. Not a whole lot of ground to cover (but a looooooooooooooot of stuff to buy) and yet have enough things to see. Your camera won’t be dissappointed and your feet won’t go on strike.

(Pictures from my camera, R’s camera and W’s iPhone.)

Previous stop: Ballooning in Perris
Next stop: Tijuana, Mexico
Trip summary: San Diego Trip
Complete photo album: San Diego 2011 (updating while on this series run)