A Lovely Sessions Ale: Balboa Park and The Museum of Man

"Niki Gator" by Niki de Saint Phalle is one of the works of art
you will find scattered throughout San Diego's Balboa Park

For the first time visitor to San Diego, it's hard to go wrong by scheduling a visit to the urban playground that is Balboa Park. Built on land that was designated for recreation even before the Mexican government was forced to cede the area to the United States due to the Mexican-American War, Balboa Park offers numerous attractions to keep anyone entertained, including gardens, museums, and the internationally-renowned San Diego Zoo.

The trees and other plant life in Balboa Park have their own unique origin

As we drove in this day, my spouse and I noticed that the park was teeming with trees, a development that would not be anything out of the ordinary. However, appearances can be deceiving - as we walked toward the main thoroughfare in the park, the El Prado, we noticed rather uniquely barked tree that resembled an Banyan Tree with fruit of some sort growing overhead. As it turned out, the trees were Moreton Bay Fig Trees, a native of Eastern Australia.

Craft Beer San Diego (Pt.1): Where Even Chains Strive to Tread

 Bine & Vine, in San Diego's Normal Heights neighborhood,
operates as one of the best beer & wine bottle shops in the area

It's impossible to deny San Diego's status as a craft beer mecca: as I type, the region is on the verge of 140 total breweries, While the abundant sunshine that San Diego is known for was more than enough reason for our visit, this particular status provided the proverbial foamy head of affirmation on our "where shall we go?" destination stein.

However, it's easy to forget that, at least by California standards, this area was late to the party. Tom Acitelli's all-encompassing book on the emergence of the U.S. craft beer scene, "The Audacity of Hops", noted for several decades up until 1989, beer choices for the local consumer were either U.S. big beer adjunct lagers or their Mexican counterparts (Corona, Tecate, etc.) As detailed by Acitelli himself, "the craft beer movement...seemed a world away; the odd Anchor (Steam Brewing) tap or six-pack the only glimpse a San Diegan might catch of it."