Balboa Park Botanical Garden

On Sunday, Dr Desert Flower and I had zero interest in watching the Superbowl since it was the New England perennial cheaters against the Philadelphia obnoxious fans underdogs.  [Note: I clearly state "cheaters" not because of just 'deflate-gate', but because of the pattern over years of coach Bellicose's reign, where he sent spies to opposing teams' training camps to video tape their practices, hired professional lip readers to spy on opposing teams' offensive and defensive coaches to gather intel on what plays were coming next, and generally played very dirty, making every under-handed, sneaky, below-board move possible].  Not wanting to spend time in front of the TV watching the glorification of two teams we despised, we decided to go somewhere that normally would have many people, but hopefully would have Much Fewer persons and be far less crowded than than usual.  We decided upon Balboa Park's Botanical Garden, as we'd never been there before and it was less than an hour's drive away.

Much Smaller than Phoenix's Desert Botanical Garden, the Balboa Park garden is cute, compact, a pretty little spot to visit.  It's perhaps 5% the size of Phoenix's botanical garden, but of course much cooler.  The weather was in the mid-to-upper 70s (Fahrenheit), with low humidity in the 30% range, with gentle breezes of 5 mph every now-and-then.  Quite pleasant.  Crowd-wise... it was a different story.  We arrived around noon, and could only find parking in the vast lot behind the Air and Space Museum in Balboa Park.  Not a long walk, but a good 1/2 mile or so to get to the Botanical Garden.  By the time we left 90 minutes later, that large parking lot was jammed full with cars circling like sharks looking for parking spaces.  The crowds were international.  I heard Spanish, Italian, Russian, Czech, Hindi, Mandarin, Japanese and Thai being spoken as we walked through the park and passed various families; International visitors who Also could not care less about the Superbowl spectacle.  We tried eating at 2 of the cafes inside the park and found 30 and 45 minute waits... and not being British, I don't queue very well, so we headed over to Banker's Hill and had a delicious leisurely brunch at Parc Bistro.

Next year, when two teams are playing that we are equally apathetic about, we'll head out to a remote national park and enjoy the serenity and tranquility, devoid of human interference.  = )