After a frolicking Day 3 at Safari Park, K-bao reacquainted herself with San Diego's famed Sea World on Day 4. It's been a while since her last visit, and this time she had a sister to show around.
The first order of business of course was to get properly oriented.
"I see an ice-cream stand about six minutes away, how about you?"
At Dolphin Theater, K-bao convinces a trainer to let her feed a dolphin (happily, sister C-bao got to participate too, tossing what turned out to be the last piece of fish).
It's hard to imagine that K-bao still remembered Shamu from her last visit. Either way, she got to see him up close and personal this time.
Indeed, while the family parked themselves safely outside the Splash Zone during Shamu's show, K-bao requested permission to run down to get closer to Shamu. Of course, the real motivation was to get thoroughly soaked. Mission accomplished.
Sea World actually has a few relatively solid roller coasters. K-bao is a pro at this point with roller coasters, but even this old hand had a few scary moments during her ride on The Manta.
Here she is getting ready for one of the other main rides, Journey to Atlantis.
"I like big splashes and I cannot lie"
The classic cheap iPhone retake
After a full day, K-bao returned to an old favorite, The Old Spaghetti Factory in the Gaslamp.
Predictably, dinner was heavy, greasy, and delicious.
K-bao took her second trip down to San Diego a few weeks ago.
As readers might recall, her first trip to the city of Saint Didacus, back in 2011, was fairly action-packed. Life was quite different back then. She was only two, and sister C-bao, for one, had not even arrived on the scene.
This time around, Day 1 consisted of a fairly leisurely day of travel, as chronicled here on sister C-bao's blog. On Day 2, her good friends the Liu's arrived, and K-bao settled down to business. The first stop was Legoland.
Waiting for the adults to get themselves ready ("Come ON Mum!")
"Just to be clear, I still won't build those Lego sets you got me"
Legoland turned out to be surprisingly large, and while rides were mostly geared towards a slightly younger demographic, K-bao had plenty to do and see.
Here she tries her hand at the wheel. Given how autonomous driving is developing, this may be one of the few times K-bao actually gets to drive her own vehicle. (And with the way she feels compelled to flick her hair recklessly while she drives, this is almost certainly a good thing).
As we passed one of the tricky ladder vendors, K-bao observed the set up for all of ten seconds before declaring confidently to K-Pop and K-Mum that she could do it if she could only be allowed a turn. After recognizing they would never hear the end of it (and not minding the forthcoming lesson in humility), the K-folks agreed to give her chance. Naturally, she was fleeced out of five bucks.
Luckily in the below vehicle the drivers had no discretion, particularly since K-bao spent most of the time doing various Supergirl poses.
"I'm an excellent driver, trust me"
Some of the lego constructions were truly remarkable. If K-Pop were responsible for building the Darth Vader figure below, for example, it would probably take several months of dedicated work and still come out looking like a lump of coal.
"Sister C-bao: 'Why are those people so little?'"
The force is strong with this one
Near the end of the day, the kids were handed 51 cents each to do the ol' Penny Press machine. Friend NL and K-bao, too sophisticated for flat pennies, thought they would outsmart the world by pooling their capital and buying something fun and cool and perhaps very sweet instead. Dismayed they were when they confidently inquired the gift store clerk as to the range of treats available to them and were pointed instead to the postcard rack. Not even a Tootsie Roll was within budget after taking into account Uncle Sam's share ("Wait, Mom, it's only $1.06! That's only four cents more! Come on!").
K-bao's spending a few days in San Diego, her first visit to the sunny city of Saint Didacus. She spent the afternoon checking out Old San Diego and the Gaslamp Quarters, sampling savory crepes at the Cremerie Chocolat and breathing in the salty sea air. She ended up at the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner, where she polished off a plate of pasta with grated mizithra cheese and browned butter ("More!"), topped off with apple sauce and a few bites of K-Pop's ice cream. Good times.
