San Diego 2017 Activities Review

For our five day trip, two big activities, and a few small ones made for the PERFECT short vacation with kids in tow. We planned to do our big activities every other day to give us a break from all that walking, and that was very wise!

Coronado / Silver Strand Beach

We were so enthralled with this beach when we went in 2009 with Mark's sister that we wanted to take the boys there when we went. We were VERY disappointed to find that there were signs up pointing out to stay out of the ocean as it was contaminated (from the recent storms, we found out later). We ignored them and dipped our toes in the ocean a bit, but then our oldest son ended up touching something on the beach that actually burned the crap out of his hand. It was really gradual, and he didn't complain about it for a day or two afterwards, but it was really freaky. It ended up causing blisters ALL over his hand, prompting him to say he "never wants to go to the beach again." We had a wonderful time when we were actually AT the beach, though! It's beautiful there, and fairly quiet. There is a campsite right there on the ocean as well. It was really a great time!

It does cost to get in - something like $4 for 2 hours, which was off-putting to Mark, but I didn't mind. As a result, we left after 2 hours, though, when we probably would've stayed all day otherwise.

Seaport Village / Embarcadero

Since we left the beach early, we decided to venture to Seaport Village to get some cookies with the boys. I love all the little shops there, and I did get some souvenir t-shirts, but there was no way in heck I was going to take my 5 and 3 year old boys in those shops with all that breakable stuff. Thankfully, Mark took the boys over to run around in the big park nearby (Embarcadero) while I shopped, and that worked out well. This is a really perfect, romantic little spot to stop if it's just a couple, or people with older kids who like to shop, though. We just didn't enjoy it as much as we had when we went there in 2010.

You do have to pay to park, although it's cheaper if you get your parking validated.

San Diego Zoo

If you're going to the Zoo, bring your walking shoes! This is a really awesome zoo! We enjoyed the bus ride at the beginning, and the Skyfari ride when our feet were really tired. However, in between those two, man was it a lot of walking.

Balboa Park

Balboa Park is a really fun, walkable park. There are the traditional "park" type areas, with a playground and picnic tables and such, but there is also a huge area filled with all sorts of neat museums, incredible gardens, fountains and restaurants. We went back in 2009 and then again this trip, and would recommend it for sure! Keep in mind most all of the museums close by 4pm, so you'll want to plan for that earlier in the day, especially as many of them charge for admission, so you'll want to get your money's worth.

Seaworld

We really had a great time each day of our entire trip, but this one may have been our favorite day. SeaWorld is seriously the perfect place to take kids. All of the shows are highly entertaining for the kids - especially the dolphin one and seal one. They have a huge kiddie play area with bouncy house and rides appropriate for kids around ages 3 (maybe even 2?). They have one big roller coaster (Manta) in the middle, which my oldest son was actually tall enough to ride (at age 5!), so that was a big highlight. They just really did the place up right, and even though we didn't end up doing even probably a quarter of what they had to offer, and we were bummed that we were too early in the season for the Cirque show, we had one heck of a wonderful day with the kids. It was really nice to have our sister-in-law and niece with us to help out with the kids a bit, so I'm sure if they hadn't been there, it would have been a little more stressful for us. The biggest downside was cost, but it was worth every penny! For even a small child, it's about $75 a ticket (if you purchase in advance online, that is - at the gate, it's more like $90), and the food inside is really expensive, so you'd have to plan for that as well. However, everything beyond the food once you're inside is included...except some of the carnival games in the kiddie area. It's a fantastic, fun family activity for a day.

La Jolla Cove

This was a new spot for us this vacation. We didn't stay for long, and we were really glad we didn't plan an entire day or even few hours here. We stopped on our way back up to LA for our flights later that afternoon. It was really neat, and the scenery was beautiful! Downfalls were that it wasn't really easy to find parking, and there wasn't really a whole lot to do when you were there. There were restaurants across the street in some of the area (but not very kid-friendly ones, so we opted for Jack in the Box further into town). They did have a few vendor booths, but they weren't really selling anything we were interested in. We spent maybe about 30 minutes there before we were bored and ready to go get some lunch. It was a nice place to stop and just check out for a half hour, but not a place to hang out and stay the whole day by any means. But then again, I guess we're not really the types to sit and just watch seals sleep on the beach.

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