Historic Coronado, CA

I float in a sun-warmed, peanut-shaped tile pool, watching the breeze flip the palm fronds against a turquoise San Diego sky, sipping a midday mimosa because Cally, the woman for whom I was house sitting, had encouraged me to drink the champagne in their wine cellar as they were no longer partial to the bubbly stuff. She and her husband had also told me to smoke their cigars since he suffers from angina, which the cigars seem to aggravate. Generous as their offer was, I had yet to even look in their humidor.

Rippling reflections of the afternoon sun on the water cast themselves against the 6-foot-tall prickly pear, oak-planked door and the adobe-arched wall above it. Chimes sound, doves coo. Pretty nice for my first day in the trenches here in Coronado, California.

The city of Coronado evolved around the Hotel del Coronado, a National Historic Landmark, which was built primarily by Chinese immigrants in 1888 as a real estate draw by its developers during a land boom. Although the scarcity of lumber in the arid desert environment first impeded development of this grand but wooden Victorian, Queen Anne Revival–style resort, the red-roofed wonder, once completed, was first in the world to offer electric lighting and oil furnace heating. Edison himself approved the final installation.

Read the entire San Diego Reader article here.