Bubble fun at Balboa Park, San Diego

Our last full day in California has been marred by the atrocity in Las Vegas. Some of De'Shaun's friends and family were at the concert but fortunately were uninjured but I suspect seriously traumatised by what they experienced. Tragic though it is, I don't think it'll be the last such event. According to one source I read there have been over 240 mass shootings in the USA so far this year. (Where 4 or more people have been killed in the same incident). So sad and so depressing. Another atrocity where ordinary people have been caught up in terrorism or extreme violence.

For our last day we travelled to Balboa Park in San Diego. The park was built as part of an exposition to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal in 1915 in the style of Spanish Renaissance architecture and extended again in the 1930s as part of another expo to help provide work during the Depression.

In addition to lots of gardens and fountains many of San Diego's museums are to be found in the park: Automative, Flight, Science, Natural History as well as theatres including a replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We didn't have time to visit any of the museums, perhaps next time.

The Rose Garden was in full bloom despite it being October! Never seen roses in October before, so I included it as an extra. The cactus garden was also very interesting too. Another extra.

On the Main Street a clown was twisting balloons for young people and had a huge bubble machine which provided the subject for today's blip,

The long jouney home starts tomorrow, leaving San Diego at 20.40 (05.40 UK time) arriving at Heathrow at 15.20. We don't have a window seat despite checking in as soon at the check in opened. We tried to snap up the two remaining vacant window seats but someone must have beaten us to it by a few seconds as when we clicked to confirm seat changes we got the message that the seats we wanted had been reserved by another passenger.