One thing we did was to visit the aircraft carrier Midway which is docked almost downtown. One of the docents estimated that about 25% of the ship is available for visiting. You are given a audio player to provide information about the various displays. The flight deck has a display of aircraft some of which were flown from the carrier and others that were not carrier based. They also had quite a few helicopters on display; between the Navy and the Marine Corps. there are lots of uses for them. The Midway was a working carrier for 47 years; longer than any other ship. It was commissioned just after WWII ended and was still out there during Operation Desert Storm. Quite an accomplishment. Did I take any photos, aw, you've got me there - not a photo. The hanger deck was mostly open as well and it mostly had WWII era aircraft. Down below you got to visit some enlisted quarters, the mess hall, officer country and the dispensary. The audio for the dispensary pointed out that they had lots of head injuries because the overheads (ceilings) were pretty low in places. The headphones kept me from hitting my head at least twice!
We also did the two hour harbor tour. It was kind of fun. The first half was the northern part of the bay. It was kind of fun going past the airport, all the pleasure boats and the Navy base on Coronado Island. There were about 20 of us on this ship intended for several hundred passengers. Then we stopped back at the dock to take on more people before doing the southern part of the bay. OMG, there were probably 200 people trooping on for the second half of the trip! Most were Asian with some kind of tour group. Looked like they were having fun though. The southern bay has shipyards where many Navy ships were being worked on. They had a fence around the yard so you couldn't get too close and a security boat came out to watch the harbor tour boat!
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