San Diego Walkabout

We had a rather bizarre start to our trip. Going through the border security at the airport we were asked where and what we were going for. We said we were going down to house/pet sit for 5 days. He asked if we knew the people and we said no. He pulled us in to Secondary Security where we sat and waited for over an hour. When they finally called us up the agent asked what we were doing. We explained about Trusted Housesitters. He said he needed to do a bit more research so we sat some more! He called us up again and explained that this is considered exchange for free room and board and goes against immigration/visa laws in the US. He said he was letting us into the US because we are doing a short house/pet sit but if we continued to use Trusted Housesitter in future, we were flagged and would not be allowed entry into the US.
It was intense and needless to say, we won't continue with Trusted Housesitter if this is going to happen. We got an uber to our airbnb neighborhood and had a coffee and walked to Balboa Park to read and enjoy the sunshine then found a really nice restaurant for a.late lunch while we waited for check-in. Tuesday morning, we walked 40 minutes to the Hillcrest LGBTQ District for breakfast and had a look around some vintage clothing shops, which is what it is known for. We then walked over an hour to meet our host and their dogs we are housesitting starting tomorrow. Chester is very large and energetic and Mikey is smaller and quiet, exact opposite. They live in a nice, quaint area with houses nearby marked as Historic Landmarks. We walked to a very trendy neighborhood called Southpark and looked around in a few shops and had coffee before hopping a city bus downtown for dinner. We covered close to 15 km and over 20,000 steps on our adventures today.Read more