By the title of this post, you’re probably thinking, Did she go on a trip to San Diego? And if you follow me in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram then you’d know the answer is UH YEA! AND IT WAS AWESOME! The reason? Well, my best friend Megan and Neil’s best friend Bryan are actually married to each other. They currently live in Northern Indiana, where Megan is doing her medical residency, and we only get to see them a few times a year. SO when Megan found out she had to fly to San Diego for four days for a medical seminar thing she asked if Neil and I would join her and Bryan. Neither of us had ever been to California so we thought, What the heck! Let’s do it! On Thursday, November 21st, at the booty crack of dawn, Neil and I met Bryan & Megan at the Nashville airport. Be forewarned: most of the images in this post were taken with my iPhone.
We had a connecting flight in Phoenix. Super cool looking from the air.
We landed in San Diego Thursday afternoon and even though it was a tad drizzly, we hit the first stop: The San Diego Zoo! Everyone said we HAD to go so maybe I had built it up in my head, or maybe the rain hindered things, but I’m not sure the zoo was any better than the St. Louis Zoo. Just sayin’
Our besties!
And BAM, Megan’s pregnant with her second! And this time it’s, a BOY!
From the zoo, we found our amazing (doesn’t do it justice) hotel: The Grand Hyatt. Every room had an awesome view… here’s our’s:
Even the lobby was grand… Around 3:30 San Diego time, aka 5:30 our time and 6:30 Bryan & Megan’s time, we were STARVING. The best thing about our hotel? It was within walking distance to the really nice part of downtown. We took a walk and found a great Californian Mexican place: Las Hadas Bar & Grill.
I’m not embarrassed to say that we were all in bed by 7:30pm Thursday night. Which meant we were all awake by 5:30 Friday morning. Oy. Megan had her first day of seminar so the boys and I got ready and ventured out to the little “village” beside the hotel: Seaport Village. Something we found out about San Diego that morning? Even breakfast places don’t open until 8.
After we ate a delicious breakfast (we ate really well in San Diego) we headed back to the hotel to decide what to do for the day. Out in the distance we could see a front coming in. I set up my office and started working while the boys played Playstation. They were calling for rain and we didn’t want to get caught out in it. This little bird was my friend for about 20 minutes. He just sat there and watched me. Weird but kind of cool.
It rained for a couple hours and by lunch time we were ready to explore the Navy Battleship Museum in the marina.
Is it weird that I can’t, for the life of me, remember where we ate lunch Friday? Anyway, after the Navy Battleship we drove across the bay to Coronado Island to search for a good dinner place. And really? Just to drive around and use the rental car lol
Driving around some more, we made it up to the Mission Beach area a little north in San Diego where we found Sunset Cliffs. Amazing place! The ocean rock allowed you to climb down right to the water, which was tons of fun!
Please don’t think for a moment that, if Neil were actually in danger, I would be taking the picture to document it. The boys just wanted to play in the crevasse. He was actually standing on a ledge. Silly boys.
Once Megan was done with her seminar for the day we headed back out to Coronado Island, walked around a bit, ate some delicious Italian at Village Pizzeria and ice cream at Moo!
Aannnnddd because we were up at 5:30am, we found ourselves back at the hotel around 8. These 27 year olds know how to live it up in San Diego on a Friday night y’all! How about some cards?!
This time we made it till 10 before we were asleep! Saturday morning, up at 6:30am. Megan left for her seminar and we found breakfast downtown at Cafe 222. LOVED this place, inside and out.
We returned to our hotel room, I worked, boys played playstation, we waited until right before 11am to drive out to Mission Beach and Belmont Park. THIS PLACE. SO much fun! The whole area really! There was only one roller coaster (but yea, we rode it!) but tons of other cool games and a rock wall that the boys just HAD to do… several times… and race of course.
Bumper cars. Eeek!
Right between Belmont Park and the ocean was a strip of little shops and restaurants. We stopped at Sandbar Sports Grill because Urbanspoon said it was good. Urbanspoon does not lie.
It’s really hard to say, because Californians know how to cook y’all!, but this MIGHT have been my favorite meal…? Chicken and black bean quesadilla. Holy mother. What I would do for one of these right now.
When Megan was done with her seminar she really wanted us to take her to the park and that was fine with us. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening there. We took so many Christmas Card worthy pictures of us but Neil had his sunglasses on in EVERY SINGLE SHOT. Fail.
That night we drove around the extremely wealthy part of San Diego and found a cute Thai restaurant, where I ate if not the first, then the second best meal of my life. Salmon in a ginger sauce and OMG I’m drooling. Sunday morning was a little lazy. We got up crazy early as usual. Megan wanted us to take her to Cafe 222 for breakfast and surprise surprise, it was delicious once again! We walked around downtown, chatted about the cost of living in San Diego, housing/apartment prices, and how much each of us could make if we moved there. A girl can dream 🙂 Megan and I scheduled massages for right before we needed to leave for the airport and we stumbled upon yet another thing that San Diego does better than anywhere else (that we’ve been). Sadly, we had different flights going home. We flew into Dallas and then Nashville while they flew into Minneapolis and then to Fort Wayne. Neil and I were so glad to be back in our bed but wouldn’t have traded that long weekend for anything.
