John and I departed from Dulles around 5:00 and landed in San Diego around 8:00 pm West Coast time. This was the first time I had stepped foot in California, even though Jen and I were about 20 minutes away on our trip to Lake Tahoe. We rented a Prius (thank God -- the gas prices here are $4.00+ per gallon for regular) and made our way to the Park Manor Suites, right across from Balboa Park. Once checked in, we were starving so John went exploring to find some food. He came back with an awesome pizza from Bronx Pizza -- quite a tasty treat to have at about midnight East Coast time.
April 18, 2008
We decided to sleep in and relax a bit before adventuring out to sunny San Diego. The weather was beautiful and we couldn't resist having "breakfast" around 11:00 at In-N-Out Burger -- yum! After eating our cheeseburgers, fries and root beer floats, we decided to visit Coronado Island to dip our feet in the Pacific Ocean. The view was amazing, the beach smooth and glittering with gold (Warren -- why the heck is it like that???) and the weather was perfect.
After Coronado, we drove out to Seaport Village to do some tourist shopping, look at the water and see the sights. In one of the sections of the village, there was a guy there who rescues parrots. If you give a donation to his rescue, you could take a picture of them (and hold them if you wanted too). Below were two of them that were walking around -- so cool!
After the parrots, we were getting hungry and stopped at a restaurant on the water. I had a seafood salad and John had seafood linguine. Mmmmm. After that, a trip to Starbucks was needed so I could get a Cinnamon Latte and then we crashed back at the hotel.
April 19, 2008
Again, we decided to sleep in (what's the rush?). Our first meal of the day was at Hash House A Go Go, per recommendation from Mat P.
The wait was about 45 minutes, but DEFINITELY worth it. The portions were HUGE (below is a picture of my 14" pancake).
I had eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy and a blueberry coconut pancake that was the size of a frying pan. John had mashed potatoes topped with spinach topped with tomatoes topped with biscuits topped with two friend chicken breasts topped with bacon and scrambled eggs. It was quite the show of gluttony. The plates were not plates -- they were serving platters as wide as the table. It was good.
After Hash House, we walked around the Gas Lamp District and did some light shopping, making sure to stop in the Ghiradelli Chocolate Ice Cream Shop for mint chocolate chip ice cream and a Coke float. We then took the Prius out to Escondido to visit Orfila Vineyard to do a wine tasting. I am happy to report that San Diego wine is nothing special -- I still love my Virginia wines.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at La Jolla Cove (pronounced La Hoya) to watch the sunset -- although the sky was overcast and we were not able to see anything other than a crazy man swimming in the freezing ocean and a beautiful view of some rocks and birds. Below is a picture of John calling his Mom from La Jolla on her birthday.
Back at the hotel, we were starving, so John went out to get Mexican from Jimmy Carter's Mexican Restaurant (no affiliation with the President) it was tastilicious!
April 20, 2008
We started the morning by eating our leftovers from the Hash House (our hotel used to be an apartment building so we had a small kitchen with fridge and microwave to heat up leftovers). After eating we ended up going to church at Saint Joseph's cathedral. It was a nice service and the priest was good.
After St. Joe's it was time for the San Diego zoo! We had a blast looking at all of the animals and enjoying the nice weather. Below are some shots from our day there. If you notice the pic of the panda, you'll see she's nursing. Apparently its pretty rare for them to do that in public
After the zoo, we were starving so we went to La Jolla again (I kept wanting to pronounce it "La Holla") to grab some food and see if we could catch the sunset. We ended up going to Whisknladle which was a really really cool place. Everything there was organic and most of their food is made onsite to include their own cured meats, cheese, mustard, mayo, ice cream, pasta, butter and bread. We had a fantastic plate of meats and cheese followed by swiss chard and ricotta ravioli and John had some spicy shrimp. There were lightbulbs hanging above us with curled filaments in them that I though were too cool not to photograph.
After our meal, we went out to the water to watch the sunset. I took over 100 pictures of the sunset over 2 days, below is one of my more favorite shots.
April 21, 2008
Unfortunately, I had to work on this particular day (I guess I owed it to my company to put in at least one day of work, eh?). I spent the majority of the day auditing our San Diego office and preparing them for their next government security inspection. The day went pretty well and when I was finished, John and I had some time to kill before catching the red-eye back to the coast. We had dinner at another restaurant in La Jolla and I took MORE photos of the sunset. One thing we did not realize the previous two days, was that this beach is home to "pupping" sea lions. After walking a bit, we found the beach and were able to get within 20 feet of 100+ sea lions basking on the beach! What a cool cool thing!
After that, we headed to the airport and got home around 6:00 am on the 22nd. We had a blast - I'm so glad I went.
2 comments:
PYRITE. OR MICA. Actually either of those would be kinda unusual in that environment so I dunno. Next time mail me a postcard with some sand pasted to the back.
looks like an awesome trip michelle!
I love the smiling pups sleeping on the sand!!
Post a Comment