Sorry, I didn't explain that right. We drove from San Francisco to San Diego, with several stops on the way. We were tourists in San Diego for a couple of days. Our hotel was walking distance from nearly everywhere we wanted go, so we figured to not pay for a car for those extra couple of days. We checked into the hotel, moved our bags into the room, dropped off the car at the San Diego airport, the returned to the hotel for the rest of our visit.

So the walk was from the rental car return to the hotel, not the rental car return to the terminal.