San Diego Review

If you're into checking out downtown:  We LOVED Seaport Village, Embarcadero, the shops and restaurant selection in Gaslamp Quarter.

Point Loma has Cabrillo National Monument and Rosecrans National Cemetery - incredible views at Cabrillo of the entire bay area.

In a previous trip, we spent half a day at Coronado, and it was well worth it!  Park somewhere and just walk around.  Silver Strand Beach is a ways further down, and pretty cool.

Balboa Park and the Zoo are right next to each other, and both are really cool.  The Zoo is around $40pp, but you get everything included.  We got a $3 discount each for getting tickets through our concierge.

Balboa Park is free to get in, but most of the cool museums cost at least $5-10 each to get in, which can add up.  The museums close at 4:30ish I think, so make sure if you go to go early.  We went around 4 when we went, and it didn't make sense to pay anything to get into any of the museums since we so little time to explore.

We really wanted to try the Wild Animal Park, but with all the (very unusual) rain, it would've been a huge muddy mess.  We'll save it for a future trip!


Beachy stuff is going to be a bit cold right now, though - it's sticking right around upper 60s/low 70s.

Restaurants I recommend:
  Phil's BBQ (on Sports Arena Blvd)  http://www.philsbbq.net
  Harbor House (in Seaport Village) http://www.harborhousesd.com
  Colima's Mexican Restaurant (in La Mesa) http://colimasmexicanmenu.info


We stayed at the Manchester Grand Hyatt and loved it!  There were some reviews about being able to hear everything, and well...I can't deny it.  But I'm a really heavy sleeper, so it didn't bother me.  We also stayed during the week, and it was busy because on the weekend was the Army/Navy game in town, so a ton of Navy family and friends were staying there as well.  It's a great location, very walkable, and close to Gaslamp Quarter, shopping, and the bus and metro stations.

For the review of our most recent trip there, check out the links below:

Day 1 - Traveling, Applebee's
Day 2 - Phil's BBQ, Family time
Day 3 - Seaport Village, Point Loma, Cabrillo National Monument, Rosecrans National Cemetery
Day 4 - San Diego Zoo, Harbor House
Day 5 - Colima's Mexican Restaurant, Family time, Home

San Diego Recap (Friday)

Friday

Hot Tub, Seaport Village, Colima's, Home

Friday was our last day in San Diego, and we spent much of the morning packing and getting ready to head home. We breakfasted on cookies from this yummy cookie store in Seaport Village that my friend Cole suggested. (Thanks, Cole!) We also decided to take advantage of the hot tub one last time, and enjoyed the beautiful view of San Diego Bay from there.

Daniel, Iryna and Sofie picked us up and we all enjoyed some lunch and dominoes at Colima's Mexican Restaurant, which Dave's wife, Vicky owns! It was wonderful, and I had my very first Ceviche there - YUM! (I've been craving it every day since!)

THANK YOU for a wonderful lunch, Vicky!! My only disappointment in this visit to Colima's is that I won't be able to return anytime soon :( I'm going to be looking up Ceviche recipes, though - mark my word! If you live near San Diego, check this place out!

Dominoes!

Heading Home

Unfortunately, we needed to be to the airport by 2:30 for our 4:20pm flight (or so we thought), so we had to cut the fun short. We said our goodbyes, then Daniel, Iryna and Sofie dropped us at the airport.

It was tough to say goodbye to this:

In order to welcome this upon our arrival back home:

San Diego Recap (Thursday)

Thursday

Breakfast at Mall, Walk to Zoo, San Diego Zoo, Walk home, Supper at Harbor House, Games at Dave's

Thursday was the first day that it wasn't raining in San Diego during our trip, so we decided we wanted to visit the San Diego Zoo! We were planning initially on taking public transportation to get there, but the concierge was highly unhelpful in that regard, simply saying that he refused to give directions that way because of the sketchy neighborhood it dropped us in near the zoo.

Another place we wanted to check out was the Gaslamp area, and the mall nearby, so we decided to start walking in the general direction of the zoo and find some breakfast along the way. We figured when we started getting tired, we'd flag a cab to take us the rest of the way, but we never ended up getting on.

We stopped for Cinnabon at the Horton Plaza Mall before heading on to the Zoo!

Horton Plaza

San Diego Zoo

We started our trip to the Zoo by taking the guided bus tour around the Zoo.

After the guided bus tour, we took off on our own to explore.

Skyfari

Our feet were still a little tired from the 3.5 mile walk to the Zoo, so we decided that we should take the Skyfari over to the other side of the Zoo.

Rhinos and a Camel with a lazy lump

My favorite: The Koala Bears

After a long day at the Zoo, we started walking back to the nearest bus stop to catch the bus home. However, after waiting a while with no sign of the bus, even at the scheduled times, we decided to just start walking to the next bus stop...and then the next, and then the next, and before we knew it, we were back to Gaslamp Quarter. We decided to check out some of the cool shops, then head back to our hotel.

Manchester Grand Hyatt at night

After relaxing our tired toes at the hotel for a little bit, we headed down to Seaport Village again to try out the restaurant we'd seen earlier in the week - Harbor House.

Harbor House

The atmosphere and cuisine were exactly what we thought it would be going in. Mark ordered a prime rib sandwich and I had the lump crab and linguine. The linguine dish I had was out of this world - it highly rivaled the Seafood Panckes I had in Kinsale, Ireland. If you're ever near Seaport Village and looking for a delicious, moderately-priced place to eat, I'd highly recommend it! You might want to make reservations if it's busy, or if you want to sit near the window, but we didn't have any and were seated right away.

After supper, we wandered around Seaport Village again (this place really does warrant a few trips - it's so quaint and cozy, and their cookies are yummy!), mainly to try to track down a particular item that we never found :(

Sarah and Jay picked us up around 7:30pm and we headed to Dave and Vicky's house for some karaoke and games with Dave, Vicky, Daniel, Iryna and Sofie.

Karaoke

Dominoes