San Diego, CA

For our two year anniversary Kelly and I decided to head back to sunny California! We went to San Francisco last year for our anniversary and loved it! We both love the sunshine and wanted to go somewhere warm where we could layout and enjoy the weather. So, San Diego was our choice! (I also had a little encouragement from this lady. I have to pause for a moment and give her a little shout out! She's the one responsible for introducing me to the blog world, San Francisco, Twitter, and San Diego. Thank you, Susie! What would I do and where would I go without you?)


We headed out west last Friday afternoon. As we waited for our flight we spent the first couple hours of our trip doing this:

Thank Heavens for the iPhone!!

The first stop on our trip: El Paso, TX! Exciting, I know. But really it was because we got to visit with our beloved Thad! (We're so ready for him to move closer and we miss him terribly!) He picked us up from the airport and then we headed to dinner at a local Tex-Mex restaurant, Jaxon's.

(WHOA--Just discovered the ability to upload multiple pictures at a time. Thank goodness! Hopefully it will make this post so much easier/quicker!!)

OK, back to our trip. It was already getting late, and we had an early morning curtain call at the airport the next morning, so we headed back to his apartment to watch some TV and get ready for bed. Saturday morning we set out on the second leg of our trip: San Diego, CA! As we flew over the harbor, we were able to sneak a couple of aerial-view photos. In the picture on the right you can see the bridge going across the harbor to Coronado Island. You'll see a close up picture of the bridge later...

We made it safely through security, over the sky bridge, on to the car rental location and in no time, we were all set and ready to discover the city! Our first stop was Carl's Jr. Kelly had been talking about the Six Dollar Burgers at Carl's Jr and he couldn't wait to get his hands on one! After all, we were on vacation. Why not splurge on a fast food hamburger?!

(Just look at that grin on his face. He was a happy camper!)

After we had our bellies full of Carl's Jr. we headed on to our wonderful hotel! We stayed at Liberty Station right by the airport and it proved to be a central location for all of our outings! San Diego is an easy city to get around and everything seemed to be 10-15 minutes from our hotel. Great location? I think so! The two photos on the right are taken from our balcony. You can see the harbor and just on the other side of the water is the Naval base. (Side note: I promise not to post EVERY picture from our vacation.)

After we settled into our hotel we headed to Ocean Beach to soak up the sun. All along the coastline in San Diego you will find dozens of tide pools. Ocean Beach had several tide pools you could walk down to and later in my post you will see the famous tide pools in La Jolla, CA.

(Note: It is difficult to take "couple" pictures when there's just two of you on vacation. So, you'll see a lot of "single" shots from our trip.)

Right after I took this photo I walked down to where Kelly was standing and promptly slid down the hill. I landed on my elbow and scraped it up pretty badly. An immediate bruise formed causing it to be a tender spot for the rest of the trip. Thankfully, I'm healing quite nicely.

These purple flowers were growing everywhere. On the rocks, on the sides of trees, on the hills...everywhere. Please excuse the crooked picture. This is a result of an uneven camera surface -- the hood of the car. Once we were finished with the tide pools, we headed up the coastline about a mile to the public beach. After we spend the afternoon laying out, we headed back to the hotel and got ready for a night out on the town. Our first stop was La Jolla. The pictures below are taken at the top of a very steep hill leading to the ocean in La Jolla. At the bottom of the hill is where you will find the famous tide pools. We didn't make it down into the tide pools because it was getting chilly, but they were cool from a distance just the same!

We spent the evening walking around the expensive shops and art galleries and then watched the sunset from the beach. There was a wedding going on and we could hear the ukulele playing Bob Marley songs.

For dinner we headed to a restaurant located in the harbor on the edge of an inlet that was completely surrounded by water, Bali Hai. It was such a pretty view of downtown San Diego and the food was delicious. The pictures I took inside the restaurant didn't turn out, but here's a pic of the sign outside.

The next morning we checked out our hotel pool and the large remake of the USS Recruit that was located right next to our hotel. Apparently, the Navy used this ship as part of their training course for their recruits.

Then it was off to the famous San Diego Zoo! We had all access passes which allowed us to see everything we wanted--and more! They included rides on the 35-minute guided bus tour and the Skyfari which was kind of like a zip line over the park. I'll spare you the boring pictures of all the cute animals--you'll have to visit to get the same experience--but I'll give you a quick run down of what we did. First things first, we took the guided bus tour around the park to get a feel for the lay of the land. You can see us standing in line waiting on the bus to pick us up. After the tour was over we made a quick dash through the Children's Zoo (sorry, no pictures) and then it was off to experience the Skyfari. You can see the four pictures I took of the park in the air! So cool! Kelly looks thrilled, huh?! The Skyfari took us straight to the Polar Bear exhibit (hence the reason I'm posing with the stuffed polar bear.) In the next picture if you look close you can see the mama Panda Bear taking a nap. We had to use our "inside voices" while walking through this exhibit. Apparently, Pandas have sensitive ears. We spent most of our time watching the monkeys, apes, orangutan, and gorillas. I think Kelly was hoping they would throw their rocks at him. No such luck, but isn't the baby gorilla adorable?! We did make it to an exotic animals show, but then we tuckered out and headed back to the hotel to rest.

That night we got ready and headed to this historic part of San Diego, Old Town. There were merchants lining the streets and mexican food restaurants all over the place. Of course we had to check out the historical markers for good measure. You can see photos of the graveyard where many of the settlers are buried and near the center of the town was a catholic church. We didn't know it at the time, but while we were taking pictures of the church they were having Mass--given it was Palm Sunday and all. Glad I didn't open the doors and barge in. Oh that would have been my luck.

After a yummy dinner at one of the mexican food restaurants we decided to call it a night! The next day we set out for Coronado Island. But before we actually made it to the ferry, we stumbled upon the famous USS Midway. We quite literally stumbled upon this historical marker! Kelly missed the turn for parking at the harbor (probably because I didn't give him very good directions) and we had to make a u-turn in the parking lot of the USS Midway. We didn't take a guided tour of the aircraft carrier, but we did take a moment to pose with the statues. I took the first picture so you could see the height of this magnificent statue! The other statues were soldiers listening to Bob Hope, holding up signs of gratitude. The attention to detail was amazing--the felt almost life like when you were standing next to them. And in the last picture you can see my crazy husband up to his usual antics--looking up the nurse's dress!

After our brief detour, we were finally on our way to Coronado. You can see the picture of the bridge I mentioned earlier in my post. When we landed on the island it felt like we were in a play city. The buidlings were colorful, and with red pointed roofs to reflect the feel of the famous Hotel del Coronado. We rented bikes to tour around the island and there were all sorts of rules on where you could and couldn't ride your bike. I found that out the hard way after getting scolded by a hotel security guard. Oops. But touring this beautiful island on a bike is definitely the best way to go! By far this was the most fun part of the trip. Well, it's a close call with the Zoo. But back to the island...we biked around the edge of the water on our cruisers and stopped along the way to soak in the scenery. After lunch we spent some more time on the beach, toured the hotel, and then headed home to crash! But not before we made one last stop at Carl's Jr. You can see by the last picture that we were worn out! San Diego is such a beautiful city and I hope we get to go back soon!!