San Diego 2017 Accommocations Review

With this being a travel blog, I'm going to stick to the basic categories of reviews on this side. If you want to check out a recap on a more personal level, you'll have to check out our family blog for that :)

We returned for our fourth trip to sunny San Diego, this time with our family of five (and a half), and it was a really great trip overall. We did the majority of things on our list, and truly were pleased with having just five days instead of a whole week there. We figured this out kinda late in the game as far as vacations go, but we end up getting a little homesick by day 6 (us and the kiddos), so we are going to begin planning our vacations for only five days.

Accommodations

As I mentioned in my preview post, we rented a home on vrbo.com, and it did not disappoint! I didn't link to the exact place before for safety concerns, in case anyone reading this is a crazy stalker or something ;) However, I will now, since you can't find us there anymore:

https://www.vrbo.com/816497

Overall, this place was exactly what we had hoped for. It was almost exactly as described, aside from updated bedding, and the addition of a washer/drier just off the kitchen in the little nook they pictured. I really want to put it out there that this place was extremely nice. I know my list of caveats is kinda longish, but I really don't mean to be negative about it. It was wonderful! We had no issues with it at all, and it was very nicely updated and we were 100% happy with our stay here.

Pros

• Location - The location was PERFECT for us, within a 10 minute drive to pretty much anywhere we wanted to go.
• Beds - The beds were very, very comfortable! We all slept great!
• Extras - We were very pleasantly surprised to find a pack 'n play AND high chair in the master bedroom closet. We hadn't counted on that, and were planning to just have Ryan sleep between us at night, as he does most nights at home. But it was SO NICE to have those luxuries. The high chair was AWESOME!
• Neighborhood - considering the situation with parking (see the cons section), we were grateful that the streets themselves weren't super busy as far as traffic was concerned.
• Keyless entry - It was nice to not have to worry about lost keys, so I did love that.
• View - the view from this place is gorgeous! You can see the ocean both from the master bedroom window and also from the deck. It is also fairly close to the airport, and the planes descend over the neighborhood. That worked well for us, as our boys LOVED to sit and watch the planes come in.
• Sound proofing - This was a HUGE plus, considering my last point. We hardly heard anything in the night (unless I happened to be awake and was listening for it), and slept great.
• Proximity to Airport - We actually flew into LAX as we got a significantly better deal on tickets there, but if you were flying into SAN, it's literally about a 5 minute drive - at most.

However, as this is a travel blog, I feel like I DO need to include the following disclaimers:

Cons

• Parking - The pictures they posted in there show all sorts of open parking spots, and that wasn't the case when we were there: We were lucky to snag a single spot, and we had to circle the block a time or two to find one most of the time. We did, however, find a spot every time at some spot around the block we were staying on, although sometimes it was across the street.
• Pin code for entry - There was a 9 digit pin to enter the place (which I finally memorized by the end of our 5 day stay, but had to look up every single time the rest of the time). It sucked having to bring it up on my phone in the text messages every time we wanted to get in. I should have written it down and just kept in my pocket, but I didn't.
• Suggestion/Request Notes - There were (very friendly, mind you) notes all over the place on the walls about this being a historic neighborhood, and a list of "suggestions" that felt a little more like warnings for staying there. These included:
  
  • No noise after 9pm, please. (I'm sure the neighbors below weren't overly thrilled with our 2 or 3am wake ups to make our baby a bottle - especially the one night where I accidentally tripped over something in the hallway)
  • No flushing anything beyond TP down the toilets.
  • Try not to do laundry unless you absolutely have to.
  • Try not to use the garbage disposal much.
  • Try to limit your use of water.
• Water pressure - I'm getting picky here, but after two REALLY long days of walking all over the Zoo and then SeaWorld, I was just dying for a nice, hot, strong shower. And the water DOES get hot, but it's just not very powerful. It was fine, but the shower just wasn't super powerful.
• No wash cloths for the kitchen - The kitchen was fairly well stocked for what we needed it for. However, it was a big strange that they had so few dish towels (only 2), yet requested that you didn't do laundry unless necessary, and had no dish cloths for the sink. An extra dish towel and a couple dish cloths would have gone a long way. It's minor, but it was actually inconvenient.

I'll say this: This would NOT be an ideal location for anyone who wanted to go out for a fun night out on the town and getting back late with friends or anything. It's also not an ideal location if you have a little boy who would rather cut off his left foot than take a shower (he's bath boy, we discovered). But overall, it's a pretty great place! I would consider staying there again if we planned to go back to San Diego in the future if not for the fact that we'd have four kids in tow the next time, and well...it has just the two bedrooms. We'd probably find a place with more bedrooms if we returned.

Accommodations Review: 2 Bedroom VRBO Bungalow in Farwell, Minnesota

We booked this quaint 2 bedroom bungalow on vrbo.com, which turned out to be a great choice for us!

I'll get right into the pros and cons of the place to keep it short and sweet.

Pros

• We LOVED Lake Blackwell. Their little system of docks was really perfect for our family. We spent most of our mornings out letting the kids fish while we sat back and relaxed. It was so serene! The lake is really quiet most of the time, and the views are outstanding!
  
• The grounds were very well maintained, and extremely tranquil. I mean, we had 3 kids under the age of 5, so nothing is ever very tranquil (keeping it real), but aside from the mosquitoes that come with having this kind of wooded area near a lake in the northern half of Minnesota, we could have spent hours out there, not even on the lake. I cannot say enough about how gorgeous the gardens around the house were! It was like a little piece of heaven, honestly! It is the thing dreams are made of :) Fantastic, fantastic job on the grounds, Glenaris and Barry!!
  
  
• The hot tub :) Oh boy was that nice after a busy day chasing kiddos around and keeping them out of trouble. After putting the kids to bed (but before they fell asleep), we sat in there every night. It was really nice to have that feature!
• The amenities at the lake: Kayaks (for adults AND kids), fishing boat, canoe, little beach for the kids, fishing gear, and all the great seating down there. Aside from some needed deck repairs (which really ought to be addressed), this was a major favorite from the trip. We spent a lot of family time down on the docks. The kids had a BLAST fishing off the dock, and every time they stuck their rods in, they pulled up a sunny (they each caught a tiny walleye, and our oldest caught a small perch once too). Nothing big off the dock, but perfect for an almost-3 year old and a 4 year old. They woke up wanting to fish and went to bed wanting to fish. GREAT memories for them!
  
• The gnomes all over the property gave us a fun little diversion during one of the mornings, going on a gnome hunt with the kids. They were entertained for a little while anyway.
  
• The teepee was really cool, even if it didn't keep the kids' interest for long. We had a little musical interlude after our gnome hunt with the drums and rattles one morning. Some of the guests stay overnight in there, I guess, although It doesn't look like it'd be very comfortable. It was very well put together, though, and on a deck, so I doubt there'd be a huge bug problem. However, you're smack dab in the woods, so getting there you might get a little bit up.
  
• The little sandbox area was FANTASTIC for my busy little guys who love to play in the sand. They spent hours out there. Make sure to lather them up with bug spray, though! It was so quiet and just gorgeous to sit out on the deck watching them play.
  
• They had a/c in the master bedroom. Very necessary on a warmer night to sleep comfortably.

Cons

• As we expected, the kitchen was really small. I'll expand on this in the full review below.
• The internet was extremely sporadic. It would blip very 10 minutes or so at times (then at other times it would be fine for half an hour). I wouldn't think it would be an issue in general for anyone who DOESN'T have 3 kids under the age of 5, since, you know, it's so gorgeous that you shouldn't need to rely on Bob the Builder or Justin Time to entertain kids, but just getting 5 people out of PJs, fed breakfast and ready for the day, there's a little downtime there. It was really frustrating having to re-establish the connection on the Roku every 10 minutes (or more often).
• The beds were extremely uncomfortable. I'll expand on this below.
• To get to the lake, you have to go down this steep driveway and cross a dirt road. I'll expand on this below as well.
• They made it extremely clear that the stairs leading up to the bungalow were ones you'd have to really be paying attention on, and they were right. We got used to having to pay close attention, so it wasn't something that would have deterred us from booking the place by any means, but anyone with a wobbly toddler who isn't good on their feet might want to think twice, or else be prepared to carry them down the stairs all the time.
  
• I hate to even list this as a "con", because it wasn't really that big a deal or inconvenience, but there was just a single window air-conditioner unit in the bungalow. I doubt you'd even have to use it most of the year, but we're spoiled, and we keep our house at 74, and we felt like we were running the thing constantly, and it was in the master bedroom, and it was LOUD at night. We adjusted, and like I said - I would hardly complain about it, but it might seriously bug you if you don't like the noise. And the second bedroom was quite a bit warmer than the rest of the place, so we felt bad for our kiddos who had to sleep in there.

Bungalow and Grounds Review

This place felt really homey, honestly. We loved the cozy little bungalow, and it was well-furnished. During the day, we felt like it fit our family pretty good, but it would have been a tinge small if we were talking about 4 grown adults versus 2 adults and 3 little kids.

The view from the living room was beautiful, and if you peek through the trees, you could see the lake out there.

The "master" bedroom was a nice size, and it had a big closet and empty drawers. If they added a nice thick memory foam thing on top of the bed, I would have no complaints. I really don't think I'm an extremely picky person as far as beds are concerned. But after one horrible night of sleep (in which I was honestly tempted to run to Walmart in the middle of the night, my back was so sore), we picked up a queen size memory foam mattress pad to make the rest of vacation bearable. It helped tremendously! I was still sore each night, but not to the point where I was out of my mind and couldn't sleep. I know I'm getting to be an old lady at 34, and I'm sure a part of it has to do with having had 3 kids in the past 5 years, but that bed was HARD. And we have a very firm bed at home.

For the second room...the "bed" was a futon mattress, so you can imagine how uncomfortable that was. It didn't help that my poor kiddos had to share the bed, and our middle guy is a huge thrasher. I'm shocked they were as well-behaved as they were considering how poorly they slept while there.

Our kids weren't overly fond of it either and kept climbing into our bed, and I know we're spoiled at home, but we don't even like that when we're dealing with our extremely comfy (albeit firm) king size bed. So an uncomfortable queen size bed made for rough sleeping for all of us. The room was really small, so we only used it when it was bedtime or nap time. It would be a huge improvement to just throw a queen size (or even just a double) bed in there. I'm not sure what the point of a futon in the room is. It's not like anyone would just go hang out in there by any means. It'd be significantly nicer sleeping too!

The bathroom was probably the worst part of the bungalow, although I DID love the sink. The owner told me they had plans to renovate it at some point, but it was definitely in rough shape overall, and they are aware of that. With a little kid who isn't fond at ALL of showers, a tub would've been a huge plus, especially when being in the lake daily required a shower each night, but I'm not sure how they would fit that in.

The kitchen was really small. Like...If you had people sitting around the table to eat, you couldn't open the fridge small. It worked for us for a week, however, and it was well-stocked (although we brought our skillet and waffle maker for breakfasts). They have a Keurig out, which was a great touch! They also had a traditional coffee maker in the cabinet, and a decent supply of spices. You don't want to run the coffee maker, a skillet, a baby monitor and the microwave at the same time, however, or you might blow a fuse ;)

The outside areas were wonderful here! We didn't make enough use of them, honestly. Sometimes with little kids in tow, you feel like keeping them contained is more important haha But I'm kicking myself that we didn't dine outside, as this was really a great area!

The hot tub was a NICE touch! It was easy to use, which we did every night to keep the bungalow quiet while the big boys drifted off to sleep for about 20 minutes.

Down by the Water

As I mentioned in the "cons" section, you have to go down the steep driveway and across a gravel road to get to the lake. It was fine, really, but it was hard to tell that just from looking at the pictures of the place on the vrbo site. We were made aware of this before booking, but it would've been nice to just let the kids run out to the dock and fish while watching them in the morning, but it was nerve-wrecking when they would wake up and want to start running down the driveway in their pjs to fish before we had even gotten a chance to go to the bathroom.

I felt like we did a lot of yelling at the kids in the mornings, as man - I would be hardly awake, and they'd be out the door heading down the driveway. As you can see here, Cashel at least was trying to instruct Kendrick to stop at the bottom to help me out haha

Glenaris and Barry really did a great job with this spot! You really wouldn't need to bring much of anything, although we wished we had remembered our own life jackets, as Mark needed one a bit bigger. However, I do have to say that some of the boards could use some replacing, and a couple of the docks should probably be secured better. Considering they have full-time jobs beyond this place, it seems like they've certainly got their hands full, but they do at least seem aware of what needs to be done. They were extremely friendly and helpful whenever we needed anything.

The guys took the fishing boat out a couple times and LOVED it!