St. George & San Diego Trip: San Diego Portion

San Diego

#GirlDad and the best one out there!

Hotel: We stayed at the Residence Inn by Marriott in Mission Valley. It was a really nice location (by TONS of thing) and had an even better breakfast each day, but I didn't love our room choice. Larry was the one who checked us in while I sat in the car with the girls so I didn't know, until after it was all done, that they put us on the ground floor in the front of the hotel. The "secure" door to get into the building right by our room would also stay open and you had to force it shut and you could just drive up to our hotel right from the freeway/street (you could literally see our room from the freeway) so I was very, very paranoid being in this room (thank goodness Larry brought his gun so I felt a little bit better). We also had a night that someone was blaring rap music and around 11:30 I had enough and called the front desk to see if they could get whoever it was to stop and they said they'd send security so that was nice (it did end up stopping shortly after that too). They had a pool that looked very refreshing and nice, but we never ended up swimming in it. The room was semi-clean, but I think because I felt on alert the whole time I wasn't able to appreciate it as much as I wanted. But it came with a fridge, stove, microwave, it had a room with a bunk bed for Cara (who absolutely loved the beds and that she got her own room), it had a pull out couch in the living room, but we put Gwen in her Pack N Play in front of the couch so we didn't use that very much. It had a desk, dining table, and basic kitchen essentials - it was set up pretty nicely. Our room had the bathroom so I think I'm glad we didn't get Cara potty trained before this trip haha.

Activities: We hit up Old Point Loma Lighthouse, La Jolla Beach, San Diego Safari Park, San Diego Zoo, and Coronado Island/Beach. I don't think I could have picked better stops EXCEPT I wish we had only done one of the zoo options and picked a separate activity so that we were doing something different each day. However, I should've done more research on the two zoos AND it was at least nice to finally cross the San Diego Zoo off our list after our last attempt at it (where we could only do the bus ride because we had to go get Larry's wallet from Six Flags). The bad part was getting a super bad sunburn at the Lighthouse (typical vacation experience for me). They had an almost 2 mile pathway where you could walk and see more of the mountain, more of the boats in the ocean, the helicopters, etc. and we didn't know we'd be doing that so we forgot to put on sunscreen. L and I got pretty bad burns, C got a little red (but we gave her some Tylenol at night so she could still sleep), G was in the Carseat almost the whole time so she was covered and got lucky. But it was (mostly) worth it - Cara got to see tons of bugs and lizards and got to walk on her own (and did really well with keeping close to us). I was just excited to see a lighthouse up close (including going into the house!). The Zoos were nice enough - the Safari zoo is only good for older kids or if you have enough money to do the safaris with it. If you don't do a Safari (we didn't) then it's just another zoo (that took us 6 or 7 hours to get through and with sunburns we were pretty miserable throughout it).

They did have a mini splash pad and a petting zoo with goats that made it more worth it (C loved petting them!) The (regular) Zoo was nice and we were able to fit it in within 3 hours and still felt like we saw enough (we skipped any aviary and if we didn't see an animal as we walked up to the "exhibit" then we skipped it). We brought our own food so it was much better than the Safari food (and cheaper). La Jolla Beach was AWESOME! I kind of wish we had gone there without kids (or with someone to watch the girls) so that we could've done the kayaking in the caves or go down to the actual beach to snorkel, but we saw SO many sea lions and seals and REALLY up close so it was worth it. Coronado Island/Beach was....okay. I was glad to take the girls to the beach and they both warmed up to it after a minute (and G had a MUCH better reaction to the beach than C did in Hawaii for her trip). We only stayed an hour since C started to get pretty cold and it was later in the day so we called it good. You do have to pay $10 to get in because it's like a state park or something, so you decide if that's worth it. The island was really pretty with cute shops and restaurants and homes so I wish we had more time to walk around it (or even stay on it for that day). We also stopped for ice cream a couple of the days so that was nice (I'm all for vacation calories haha).

Food: We didn't eat at a bunch of exciting places, I think the only place notable was this Mexican food place down the street called "Amigos" that I ordered a California burger (with fries IN it - OMG it was delicious!). The rest of the time it was just wherever we were (the zoo places was the worst and most expensive!!)