Walking along San Diego’s Embarcadero brought back a lot of unexpected memories. But I’ll get to that in a moment.
Far too late in my trip I thought it’d be great to book a sunset cruise on San Diego’s bay. By the time I thought of this there were no available cruises. If you think of this obvious activity in advance it can be booked everywhere from Hornblower to Viator to Airbnb.
So I settled for taking a nice walk along the Embarcadero waterfront as the sun slowly set over the horizon.
Heading south from the USS Midway Museum I found myself at a small waterfront shopping center. From there the busy footpath hits two parks bordering a private marina.
At the north end of the park people were stacking rocks, flying kites, and making large soap bubbles. It was touristy but also very low-key, as far as I could tell the kite flyers in particular weren’t asking for tips.
The north and south ends of the park aren’t connected. They only exist to protect the Mariott’s private marina from waves.
It’s a long walk between the two parks, but I felt compelled to continue. In between is the marina with boats that must cost a fortune. On the opposite side is the convention center. They were hosting a car show with test drives for new cars out back on the waterfront side.
When I finally reached the south side of the park, a group of tourists zipped up on electric scooters and asked me to take a photo of them against the sunset.
This was maybe the fourth group who asked me to take a photo, but I happily obliged. One woman in the group wanted to line up the shot before I hit the button on her iPhone as though she was a director of photography.
At some point while walking around — I’m not sure quite when — I recalled having visited this part of the bay’s shore last time. The convention I attended back in 2007 had an after party here at the park.
Suddenly it all came flooding back. At the party I met a young woman about my age and we got to chatting. We both felt kind of intimidated among the larger group of professors and intellectuals. It wasn’t anything romantic as neither of us were single, but a mutual feeling of being lost in an academic and professional world neither of us truly understood as students. We hung out at the party for hours, young and confused by those around us.
I don’t recall her name or even what she looked like, and I’m pretty sure we never exchanged contact info. But our chance encounter was all I could think about sitting around that funny little park behind the Convention Center as the sun set on San Diego Bay.