Moving to Chicago

I just signed a lease for an apartment in Chicago! Now I will be a full time city girl - I will work AND live in downtown Chicago. The apartment is in the River North neighborhood. Click the map to the left to see where I'm moving (River North is circled in red). Now my commute to the office will only be a 10-minute walk. Also, I am less than a mile from Navy Pier, the Loop (main downtown area), the library, my church, the Jewel grocery store, and the chocolate factory.

I will not be taking my car with me because it costs over $200 a month to park it in the city. It would be crazy for me to pay that much to have a car in the city considering that I am only 3 blocks away from a stop for the ‘L’ Brown Line. The ‘L’ is Chicago’s electric passenger railway system that consists of eight rapid transit lines totaling 106 miles. It is the third-busiest rail mass transit system in the United States.

I'll post pictures of my new apartment once I move in...this might take a while because I'm going to be traveling a lot for work. An air mattress and some clothes are the key items that I need to move to my new apartment for now.

Lemon Grove, Little Italy, and La Jolla

Today was my final full day to explore San Diego. This morning I took the trolley to Lemon Grove and Little Italy. Then, I spent the rest of the day in La Jolla, a wealthy seaside resort community which occupies seven miles of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. I saw seals, surfers, sand, and a spectacular sunset.

I have really enjoyed exploring the San Diego area and working out of our office here, but I know that I will be ready to fly back to Chicago at the end of this week.

Click here for pictures.

SeaWorld

Today's destination was SeaWorld. The dolphin show and the killer whale show were the highlights for me. I took over 700 pictures at SeaWorld! Since the animals move around so much, it takes some patience to get a good picture. I only posted the good ones :)

SeaWorld welcomes about 4 million visitors per year and is one of San Diego's (and California's) most popular tourist attractions. I had fun at SeaWorld, but I actually liked the zoo better. SeaWorld was a bit too commercialized for my taste. And, it cost about twice the admission price of the zoo!

Click here to see pictures from my trip to SeaWorld.

Point Loma

After my day at SeaWorld, I still had time left to explore the area. I drove over to Point Loma to see the lighthouse at Cabrillo National Monument. The views were spectacular from this peninsula that rises 400 feet above sea level. I ended my day by watching a beautiful sunset from the campus of Point Loma Nazarene University.

Click here for pictures.

Working in San Diego

For those of you who are wondering...along with all the fun I am having, I am actually working hard too! The blog entries from my trip wouldn’t be complete without pictures of the places where I am spending the majority of time out here in San Diego: my office and my apartment. Our San Diego office recently moved to a fabulous new location that has a view of the ocean! So, while I am working hard during the day, I can look out my office window and see the ocean.

Everyone at the office has been very welcoming and they have been keeping me busy working on fire protection reports for a variety of military projects. I'm learning all sorts of things about the special requirements for military projects and I have been increasing my vocabulary with all their crazy terms. When I get back to Chicago, I will continue to help them out with the abundance of projects that are overwhelming them right now.

I’m staying at an apartment that is about a mile from the office, so it has been nice to have a short commute to work! Between my apartment and the office there are tons of stores and restaurants. And, just a couple blocks from the office is a huge outdoor mall. Everything is very conveniently located within a 2 mile radius.

Click here to see pictures of my San Diego office and apartment.

Downtown San Diego

Today after work I took the San Diego Trolley to the downtown area. I walked along the water and then made my way to the Gaslamp Quarter. This historic heart of San Diego is considered the current hub of urban chic.

Click here for a few pictures from my evening in downtown San Diego.

California Coast

I started the day at Torrey Pines State Reserve hiking along the scenic trails. Then I drove up the coast along historic U.S. Route 101. I stopped at a couple seaside communities along the way to check out some of California's most remarkable beaches. I ended the day at Coronado and watched a spectacular sunset.

Click here for pictures.

San Diego Zoo

After finishing my first week working in San Diego, I was ready to start exploring the area. I decided to begin my first weekend at the Word-Famous San Diego Zoo! The zoo is situated on 100 acres in the northwest corner of Balboa Park. It provides refuge for 4,000 rare and endangered animals. The San Diego Zoo grew out of exotic animal exhibitions abandoned after the 1915 Panama-California Exposition.

I was very impressed with so many things about this zoo and I HIGHLY recommend visiting this incredible place. They have quality veteran staff, beautiful landscaping (the grounds qualify as an accredited botanical garden), exhibits designed around a particular habitat, and a variety of animals. The zoo is immersed in animal conservation and research worldwide.

Click here to see some of the animals I met during my visit to the World-Famous San Diego Zoo.