Our next stop on our research for a place to live in
retirement was to beautiful San Diego, which is called, by some, America’s
Finest City. The San Diego area is where
my parents chose to live in retirement. The weather there is normally very
pleasant, with cool nights and warm days, although there are intermittent
periods of very hot weather or cold, but not freezing, weather in the brief
winter. It is described as a
Mediterranean climate – but only by people who haven’t been to the
Mediterranean.
Our Hundred Best Places to Retire in America book had
listed Oceanside as one of the best places.
I was curious as to why that was, because Oceanside had seemed to be
just another suburb in North San Diego County, only closer to the ocean. So we would find out.
We flew out on a Saturday, on a miserable Airbus 321, a
long, skinny airplane with not enough power to inspire confidence. Our flight
was delayed for a minor mechanical problem.
They said it was a tray table, but I didn’t see seeing anyone in the cabin
working on anything. Who knows?
We arrived in San Diego and collected our luggage after the
usual interminable wait. Then we found
out that the rental car system, which used to be very simple and efficient, had
been completely redone. Instead of a Hertz
van taking us to the Hertz location, they had one giant bus which served all
rental companies, and a new rental car center had been built off the Pacific
Highway, a couple of miles away. The bus
we had was driven by a huge, morbidly obese man who did nothing to help
anyone. People loaded their luggage on
to the bus until there was no more room for luggage or for people. There were a lot of people standing in the
aisle. The bus lurched off into the
darkness. It took a good little while to
get where it was going.
If you travel to San Diego, allow an extra 30 minutes on
each end of your trip to deal with the new rental car center. It’s awful.
We were not sure where we were upon leaving the center. A sign pointed to I-5. We don’t use I-5. We eventually stumbled around and found the
Pacific Highway, which is the way we know to get to Rancho Bernardo, where we
were staying.
We had a nice maroon SUV, a Kia Sorento. It was powerful and
comfortable, but it got 30 mpg less than my Prius. Okay, because we were planning on a lot of
driving around.
We drove up to Rancho Bernardo and over to the Rancho Bernardo Inn. Rancho Bernardo is a master planned community
in inland north San Diego, part of the city itself. My Mom and Dad lived there when they first
moved to San Diego, back in the 80’s, and Jody and I always liked it
there. My parents later moved to
Escondido, a northern suburb, a pretty good sized city in itself. Escondido is popular with retirees in part
because it has a very warm climate. Coming from Texas, we’re not impressed by
very warm climates.
It turns out to be poor planning on my part to arrive at the
RB Inn at 5 or 6 PM on a Saturday. The
place was teeming with cars and restaurant patrons, and people attending
weddings. There were at least three
weddings, one of them Indian, with beautiful women in beautiful colorful saris. The RB Inn offers valet parking, but I wanted
to avoid the standard $5 tip for the valet since we were planning on being in
and out a lot. We parked near the
entrance and checked in, and the lady indicated we could park ‘in the back’
because that would be closest to our room.
We had no idea what ‘in the back’ meant, but found a spot with some
empty spaces and no sign telling us not to park there. We later found an additional guest parking
lot further in the back, and did not have a problem parking again.
Our room was probably one of the original rooms at the inn,
which was first begun in the 60’s. It was in a one-story building, and the
surrounding sidewalks were falling apart. There was a pool nearby. The room had
a flat screen TV, a K-Cup coffee maker, and good wi-fi. What it did not have was a toilet that would
dependably flush, at least not on the first attempt, and the bathroom door
would not completely shut. It had a wonderfully comfortable king-sized bed,
only one comfortable chair and a desk chair.
There were no power outlets anywhere near the desk – you worked off
battery power and plugged in when not using your computer. It was pretty quiet,
but the grounds crew started work pretty early most days. The room had a mini-fridge which worked well,
but you had to go get ice out of an ice machine. We were on a deal through American Airlines
Vacations, which put together the airfare and the hotel. The hotel acted like no one had ever done
that before.
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| Our room |
One thing we really liked about the hotel was its fitness
center. The center was a bit of a hike
down the hill, but it had a small selection of treadmills and elliptical
trainers, and a variety of resistance equipment. We made good use of it while we were
there. One funny thing was that the
elliptical trainer had a completely different resistance level than the ones we
use at home. At Texins Activity Center,
I start the elliptical at level 3, then go to 5, to 7, to 9, to 11, and then
stairstep back down. At the RB Inn,
level 5 was tougher than level 11 at TI.
I was semi-crippled for days after 36 minutes of that.
On Sunday, a bright, beautiful, sunny, but very hot, day, we
looked at Zillow (real estate website) and
picked out four properties to inspect, all of which were open houses. Zillow allows you to request only properties
with open houses that day if you choose.
There were a dozen or more that fell in our price range and met the
requirement to be on one story. We chose
two in Oceanside, one in Vista, and one in Escondido, so we could work our way
back to the hotel.
The first property we saw in Oceanside was in a borderline
area and the house was not all that nice.
It had tiny rooms and uneven maintenance. A quick no.
The second house in Oceanside was in, as the Bruce Springsteen song “Johnny
99” says, “in a part of town where when you hit a red light you don’t
stop’”. We didn’t get out of the car, so
Oceanside was oh for two.
The third property we visited, in Vista, was a very nice
house with a sunken living room. (I always envision the sunken living room full
of water, but that’s another story.) The
house was in a quiet residential area and belonged to a family with kids. The back yard was barren. We learned that this is common – due to the
terrible ongoing drought in California, a lot of people have given up on their
yards and just let them die. It is very sad. The realtor at the open house was
more interested in our retirement place search than in showing us the house. It
was just okay. One point of interest was
that that house did not have air conditioning.
Vista gets a sea breeze, she said.
Yes, but sometimes it gets pretty hot there, at least during the day. So another thing to ask about, does the house
have air conditioning.
The fourth house we looked at was in Escondido, and I
thought it was in one part of town but it was in a different part of town, with
older homes built back in the 70’s. This one had been fixed up somewhat and was
pretty nice, but the neighborhood seemed to be mostly Spanish speaking and I
didn’t think we were a good fit for it.
Interestingly, the house also had no A/C, which should be against the
law in Escondido.
After all of that we were starving, but stopped at the
supermarket, called, seriously, Major Market, where they were giving away all
kinds of food. It helped.
We had dinner at the Veranda restaurant at the Inn, outside,
with a space heater. San Diego has warm
days and cold nights, and the temperature plummets when the sun goes down. So they have heaters at outdoor tables in the
restaurants, and they are, as far as I can tell, the primary cause of global warming.
Just about set my hair on fire on
multiple occasions.
We had previously contacted a realtor based in Oceanside, and
filled her in on what we were looking for.
She had been sending us updates on properties available in Oceanside and
Vista, and we had filled in with some others on Zillow. We worked it out to where she would meet us
on Monday at one of the properties, and she would have us follow her to some others. Since she wanted to meet at 11 AM, we decided
to go to our favorite breakfast and lunch place in San Diego, called St Tropez Bistro
and Beyond, in the coastal town of Encinitas. They do a really good job, and the outdoor
seating didn’t need heaters. We first
went there back in 1998 after spending a week in France, right near the real St
Tropez. France it isn’t, but the food is
consistently good.
We met Nancie at a gated, 55+ community in Oceanside called
Villa Trieste. I was prepared to dislike
it based on where it was, but when we got in there it was absolutely
beautiful. The house we saw had two
bedrooms and two baths on the main floor, and everything was spotless and
beautiful. It had an incredible
view. There was a huge loft for a second
floor, a game room or office or den or extra bedroom. No bathroom up there. The price was right up
at the top of our budget. The community
has a pool and a clubhouse and seemed to be extremely well kept. But the stairs are a problem.
We also saw a manufactured home in a 55+ community, but it
kind of gave me the creeps and the kitchen was smaller than the one we have
now. We saw a resale home in a
non-age-restricted area which looked pretty good, but I was turned off by the
dead yard.
We also saw a nice house in Vista, and then she took us to
view a condo in Encinitas, well away from the ocean, which was an absolute dump
for $432,000.
So we have an idea what is out there and what we are up
against. When we visited Mendocino
County in August, our realtor, Clint, had said that in California the first
$100,000 was for the weather. San Diego
has a lot better weather than Mendocino, and I think that figure is too low.
That evening (still Monday) we met up with a bunch of people
from the old Escondido Country Club, where my Dad had been a member for many
years, and which was the center of his life after my Mom passed away. The club
went bankrupt a few years ago, and it really had a major affect on Dad. It was pretty emotional for me, seeing Dad’s
old friends, most of whom I had not seen since his funeral. We got there early, and it was a little
chilly in the restaurant (Marie Callender in Escondido) so I went back to the
car to get my sweater and Jody’s jacket.
Out in the parking lot I saw my Dad’s old friend Ray, who looked at me
and said “I know you” and I re-introduced myself. Ray wondered what I was doing there. I said I was there to have dinner with
him. He said they needed someone to buy
dinner, and I offered him good luck with that.
As it turned out, everyone else was already there getting started on
ordering drinks. Service at Marie Callender was glacially slow. But Maryann Haller was there, an old friend
of Dad’s who lost her husband recently, and Bobbi Zerda, a special friend of
Dad’s, and Fred Bennett and Ginny, and Ray and a woman named Pat, whom I did
not know. Pat asked me if my mother’s
name was Margaret. She had been a friend
of my Mom and they had done water aerobics together for a while. No one else at
the dinner (except Jody of course) had known my Mom. People say I look like my Mom, and I guess
Pat saw the resemblance. The food was so-so but it was a good time.
Tuesday we decided to do some more scouting of places to
check out, this time in the immediate area around the Rancho Bernardo Inn. We limited the Zillow search to zip code
92128. We found a variety of homes with
two or three bedrooms, on one story, with a price less than or equal to (gulp)
$550,000. We could not go into any of
them but we could drive by and see what the houses looked like and whether we
were interested. We ruled one out
because it has a pool (been there, done that) and others because of
questionable conditions. The area is
great. RB is a wonderful place to live. We contacted Nancie again and told her we had
a list of places we’d like to see, if she had time to come over to Rancho
Bernardo. She agreed.
Also on Tuesday we had lunch with my Dad’s good friend,
Bobbi. We went to a place called Swami’s on West Grand in Escondido. Most of the conversation was about our
efforts to find a place to live in retirement, and on Bobbi’s recent trip to
Europe, but some of it was about my Dad.
We all miss him, but I think maybe Bobbi misses him a little more than
others do. Later we went over to the
ocean and drove down to La Jolla, where we actually found a parking space. The tide was way out, on account of the super
moon, and we got some photos of places that are normally under water. It was very hot, with hardly any breeze. Lots of foreign languages were being spoken
by the visitors.
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| Low tide |
Late on Tuesday we decided to go to Bates Nut Farm in Valley Center, and texted Brooke, who had been my Dad’s neighbor and had done so much to help him, and us. Brooke and her husband Brandon live in Valley Center. We agreed to meet up. But Siri put us on a road alongside some kind of a farm, no houses in sight. We managed finally to get in touch with Brooke, who navigated us, speakerphone to speakerphone, up to their house, which was on an unpaved road off a dirt road. We got to meet Annabelle, their new daughter, and see their beautiful, if somewhat chaotic, house. And a spectacular sunset.
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| Always wanted to go mountain climbing in the dark |
Wednesday was my birthday.
No house hunting. We had lunch at
Rubio’s, which started out as a fish taco
place and now is called a ‘Coastal Grill’.
They have a combo that I like, called the Coastal Trio, three tacos, one
shrimp with avocado, one blackened tilapia with a zingy sauce, and one the
original fish taco, deep fried with cabbage.
It makes a great combination. I
love fish tacos, and the ones I can get here in Texas at Tin Star Taco Bar are really good, but
Rubio’s are just a little bit better.
We then drove down to Point Loma, which overlooks the city
of San Diego, the Coronado naval base, and Lindbergh Field, the international
airport, and the beautiful harbor. When
my mother passed away, she had asked for no wake, no funeral, to be cremated
and to have her ashes laid in the Pacific.
She got part of what she asked for – no wake, cremated, laid in the
ocean. She did get a funeral in
California and a memorial service in New York.
My father indicated at one point that he wanted the same thing she
wanted. We had a beautiful funeral in
Escondido, and his ashes were laid in the ocean as close as possible to where
my Mom’s were deposited. So Point Loma
is the closest we can be to ‘visit’, without renting a boat. I didn’t try to pinpoint the location. The ocean is the best gravesite. We spent an hour or two wandering around and
taking photos. It was beautiful. The hot weather was gone, never to
return. We had to start worrying about
having sweaters.
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| Somewhere, out there, my parents' ashes were laid to rest |
That evening we had dinner at French Market Grille in Rancho
Bernardo. We had eaten there once
before, way back in 1998 after we had visited France with my parents. The restaurant seemed like it should be in
Europe. There was one guy doing
everything – he took your order, brought the wine, failed to notice it was a
screw top until I said something, brought the meal, cleaned everything up. He did this for every table in the
restaurant, which is something you see all the time in Europe but never in the
USA. He was a Frenchman, and clearly the boss. The food there was excellent – I had a rack
of lamb that was rarer than I would cook for myself but was wonderful. The prices were half what a French restaurant
in Dallas would have been.
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| Rack of Lamb, French Garden Grille in RB |
Thursday we visited another of Dad’s old friends, a lady
named Deanna, who lives in Orange County, in San Clemente. Deanna has had a number of health problems,
but she seems to be doing okay now. We
visited for a while, and ate lunch at an IHOP nearby, which had incredibly slow
service but gave us more time to talk.
San Clemente was at one time the site of the Western White House when
Richard Nixon was in office. I was curious if the place still existed. Deanna didn’t know but said it certainly
wasn’t a tourist attraction. I did some
research later, and it turns out that Nixon sold the place to a rich backer,
who got richer by developing the area around it. The former Nixon residence is in private
hands and is not a museum.
Deanna wanted to hear about what happened to my Dad, so we
told the story again. It is so hard to
talk about. I explained that the
personality changes he had, on account of the dementia, made it really
difficult to deal with him. She hadn’t
really seen any of that. I also
explained about the sudden intestinal bleeding that he suffered from, and she
had witnessed some of that on one occasion.
So it was, once again, very emotional.
But we enjoyed the visit. She
said it gave her some closure, and I think it gave me some, too.
On Friday, our last full day in San Diego, we met again with
Nancie and saw some properties. All of
them were in Rancho Bernardo. We had
given her a list of four or so that we definitely wanted to see, and another
five that were to be backups. As a
result of the very active market, there were only four of the nine still
available, two days later. The first
house was semi-perfect. Everything was
immaculate, the rooms were good size, the colors were perfect. It was on a moderately busy street, kind of a secondary artery, but the limiting
factor was two bedrooms and no separate seating area or den, just a living room
on the open floor plan. Where does the
office go? I guess it goes in the second
bedroom. The price was way up there, so
we couldn’t pull the trigger. The house
was on my old jogging route, when my parents lived in Rancho Bernardo.
The other homes we saw were very nice as well. One was close to a main road (Pomerado Road)
but wasn’t too noisy, but it was sort of stuck in the 1970’s. The others were nicer. At this point, we were just looking and
unable to make any kind of an offer. We
were going home the next day.
That afternoon we had lunch at St Tropez and enjoyed a trip
along the shore. That evening we had
dinner with friends at Vintana,
the strangest restaurant this side of the Baltic states. It sits on top of Lexus of Escondido. They have live music on Friday, but it was so
loud it was hopeless. The food was
pretty good but the flatbreads are really for two people, so Jody couldn’t
finish hers.
The next day we packed up and went to check out. We had
charged some meals to the room, so I expected some additional charges at
checkout. But they also charged us
$25/day for parking. I said I had not
heard about that. The lady said I should
have been reminded at check-in. That
hadn’t happened. I said, it is what it
is, we’ll pay it and I’ll write a letter to somebody to get it refunded. She took it off the bill. I don’t know if I missed some fine print or
what. I did not save a copy of the
voucher and you can’t print it any more.
We got up way too early on Saturday, but it gave us a chance
to go to St Tropez AGAIN and have breakfast.
We really like that place. The
rental car center was, once again, a pain.
They are supposed to have a bus every three minutes, but it was more
like twenty. We were early. The security line at San Diego is always
horrible, but with Pre-Check we avoided it.
Our flight home, on a Boeing 737, was a lot quieter and a
lot more pleasant than our flight out.
The old saying, “if it isn’t Boeing, I’m not going” is pretty good
advice.
We still have not decided where to settle, but I sure would
like to see if we can make San Diego work.
The climate is unmatched. We will
have to study the details.
