Saturday 26 April 2008

Oceanside

After five days in San Diego, we had managedto do something completely different every day. We were a bit at odds to work out what to do on our last full day in San Diego. We'd already done all the big tourist things and had run out of ideas to some extent.
The only thing that really looked like a plan was to take the Coaster (above) to Oceanside. The trip takes around an hour each way and runs from downtown San Diego to the northern beach township of Oceanside.
 
It's quite a nice run along the coast stopping at Sorento Valley and a number of beach side communities along the way. The Pacific Surfliner follows the same route but continues on to Los Angeles and beyond. It would be a great way to see the California coastline.
We arrived at Oceanside after an hour traveling through some really nice scenery. Unfortunately it was a bit of an anti-climax. There just wasn't much there. The beach was nice, but there wasn't much else. We had planned to have lunch when we arrived, but the only options we could find were a very small Mackas (they say the smallest in the world??) and a place right out at the end of the pier called Ruby's.
 
Maybe there was something down at the other end of the beach but after a dodgy experience with the public "facilities" by Kerri, we decided to grab some Mackas and high tail it.
In hind sight we should have hopped off the train a stop earlier at Carlsbad where there seemed to be a quaint little beach side community that was much more established than Oceanside. Oh well, we weren't to know. The train trip was nice at least.