Day 31

In my limited travel experience, I have never seen a city so well laid out and so beautifully done. We have been exploring off the beaten path and everywhere we go, there is beauty. The streets are wide, the curbs heavy duty, the sidewalks wide and undulating, and it appears that nothing here was done on the cheap. It is also evident that they do not have the problems we have in Canada such as frost heaves. If anything here is cracked, it is the result of earth tremors, but is repaired very quickly. 

On our walk this morning, we saw that the mile strip we travel has been swept, the trees pruned, and the boulevards raked and vacuumed, all since our last walk. All is groomed and maintained meticulously. There are no weeds, but we also have noticed that more of the private yards are going to artificial turf. It makes sense here and because the real lawns are so heavily fertilised, it is difficult to tell the difference. 

As we walk, we pick oranges for a quick snack. They are everywhere and nobody is picking them, except us tourists. We had some wonderful tangerines 'fall into our hands' just this morning.

We also came across a very nice house with a For Sale sign and a container full of brochures. The asking price is $259K. There are a number of vacant houses in our neighbourhood, and the local shopping malls are about 1/3 vacant. The Walmarts and Costcos seem to doing fine, but the specialty stores are suffering. 

Last night, buylizzy wanted to check out Joanne's Fabrics. I dropped her off and left to get a root canal which was a whole lot more fun. Actually, I went to Costco to see if I could get a bead on some photographic equipment. They have a good selection but not all the accessories. The Costco here is twice the size of ours. Of course, take the wine and liquor section out and it would not be all that large. 

We spent four hours by the pool today. We are getting really lazy. Did it take this long to unwind? In a few minutes we are going to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. We need one of these at home.