Sunny San Diego

While I am supremely late in writing this post, I remember enjoying San Diego a lot!!! It was a much needed break after a long time, and the city did not disappoint. Everything about this place is great. During the entire trip I thought about looking up San Diego jobs at least three times :-). People were nice, weather was great (in spite of being on the cooler side!), food was amazing and the landscapes were beautiful! We stayed in Carlsbad for 5 days, which was about a 30 min drive from the city. There were too many things to pick from and we had a tough time making decisions! 

Day 1: Old Town and Carlsbad

Old Town was not really part of our planned itinerary, but the car rental guy sold it to us pretty well and we started the trip by changing our plans! It was a very nice way to start the trip. This is the oldest neighborhood in San Diego and the historic park commemorates the early days of the town. This is where it all began. The park includes several restored historic buildings and provides a glimpse into the early American and Mexican life. The neighborhood also has some nice Mexican restaurants and we went to Old Town Mexican Cafe that made fresh tortillas in front of us. There were of course tons of souvenir shops selling trinkets, along with some specialty shops selling soaps, candles, colorful pottery, plants, etc. It was very relaxing to just walk around from building to building, then shop to shop, stopping for some entertaining live music and food. Don't miss beautiful hand-made soaps at the Ye Olde Soap Shoppe! It was my favorite store.

Beautiful soaps

Fresh tortillas

Ornaments

Masks at a Tibetan shop

Live music

Parking Tip:
While most of the parking in this neighborhood is either paid or for patrons only, the historic state park has its own free parking.

After having enough margaritas and fresh tortillas to accompany a satisfying meal, we headed to Carlsbad, which is a pretty popular tourist town. Carlsbad mostly has rocky beaches, so the experience here is a little different. South Carlsbad beach has a lovely camping site on a cliff overlooking the ocean! You can sleep to the soothing sound of waves! While we did not camp at this beach, we caught the sunset here that evening.

Sunset at South Carlsbad beach

Day 2: Donut Bar, USS Midway Museum and Coronado Beach

The first thing that we did on day 1 after picking up our car was to head to Donut Bar in Gas Lamp Quarter. At 10:30 in the morning, this place was closed! We were super bummed, when the owner and chef walked to us and apologized for running out of all the donuts! He promised us that even if we came at 11 am the next day, we would still get donuts. He was going to make more :-). In the meanwhile one of his patrons walked out of the shop stopped to join our conversation with the owner and generously offered us a fresh red velvet donut. After hesitating for just a second (before he changed his mind :-)), I grabbed the delicious donut and thanked him profusely! On day 2, we were there at 10:30 am again and this time I bought a bunch of different flavors of donuts. The donuts were so good and there was such a wide variety of flavors, that I compensated for all the years that I have avoided eating donuts, in spite of loving them!!!! It's not surprising that I totally forgot to take pictures of the donuts. Eventually, I did, but not before finishing some. They were yummy and gone very quickly. The flavors in the picture are creme brûlée, toasted coconut and smores. Another "do not miss" place on my list!

After filling up on the delicious donuts, we headed to USS Midway Museum. The Midway museum consists of USS Midway, America's longest serving aircraft carrier. The ship houses many aircrafts and you get an opportunity to see them, sit in some of them and get a glimpse of the crew's life on the ship. This is a huge museum and an entire day is necessary to see this place. We probably spent 4-5 hours and did not see everything. You definitely need to wear comfortable shoes for this one. My recommendation is to go to the flight deck first and take the guided tour of the captain's cockpit. There are lovely views to be seen from the deck and you can board several aircrafts. While I enjoyed this part the most, the other exhibits in the main area were also fun. We walked through various exhibits, including ship's jails, sleeping quarters of sailors, captain's quarters, etc. There are also flight simulators and interactive exhibits that are fun.

Parking tip: 

While parking in the pier area might seem to be cheaper, the amount of time it takes to see this museum compensates for the low hourly rate. The flat rate parking, I believe is equally good and close to the museum, if you plan on spending a long time at the museum.

The navy pier area close to the museum has a nice park and a lovely seafood restaurant, called Fish Market Restaurant. We loved the oysters at this place! The iconic Unconditional Surrender Statue is also here at navy pier.

Part of USS Midway as seen from the entrance

Partial view from the Captain's Seat

Unconditional Surrender "Kiss" Statue

From the museum we headed to Coronado beach and spent some time just walking on the shore and people watching. We also stopped at Coronado Del Mar hotel and admired it from outside, but did not go in. However, it is supposed to be beautiful from the inside and a self-guided tour is recommended along with a Sunday brunch. The waterfront homes in this neighborhood were beautiful and we also saw the beautiful city skyline glowing during sunset.

Day 3: La Jolla Cave Kayaking and Sea Lion Watching

The La Jolla area in San Diego has lovely beaches and plenty to do. In addition to beaching you can go kayaking and snorkeling here. There are several sea caves. All but one can be accessed through the ocean. Only one cave has an entrance from land, and it's called Sunny Jim's Sea Cave. This one is private and requires an entrance fee. This was our back up option, in case we failed to go kayaking. But we were able to go kayaking with La Jolla Sea Cave Kayaks. The tour guide was super sweet and it was a small group. We were able to actually go through one of the caves, so it was a pretty exciting experience. On this guided kayak tour we saw several sea lions. It was a super fun, "not to miss" experience.

La Jolla Sea Caves 

After kayaking we headed to The Taco Stand for a quick lunch and this small place did not disappoint. The place might be small, but the menu was not. There was plenty to pick from! 

From here we headed to Children's Pool in La Jolla, also called as the Seal Beach. Tons of sea lions were resting here and it was fun to see them sun bathe!

Day 4: Joshua Tree National Park

While Joshua Tree National Park is about 3 hours away from San Diego, we still wanted to include it in our itinerary. The trees in this park are unique to the region and we hadn't seen anything like this before. It was pretty hot in the park, even though we reached here at 9 am. It is a vast region divided into two distinct desert regions, the Colorado and the Mojave. The Colorado desert system has beautiful cholla cactus gardens that I absolutely loved. The Mojave desert system has the Joshua trees. There are two visitor centers, Joshua and Oasis. We started at the Joshua Visitor Center and did a few hikes. We stopped at Quail Springs, hiked Hidden Valley and Barker Dam trails and checked out Keys View and Jumbo Rocks points before heading to Cholla gardens.

Different types of cacti in the Mojave desert system

View on a hiking trail

View from Keys View

The cholla cactus are known for their tenacious spines that attach vehemently to skin and clothing. There are trails in these gardens and it is strongly recommended to stay on the trails. It is extremely difficult and painful to get the spines of these cacti out and they seemingly sneak up on you!

Cholla Garden in the Colorado desert system

Be sure to take plenty of water and sunscreen and wear hats and shades to protect yourself from the harsh sun at this park.

Day 5: Balboa Park, Gourmet Ice Cream and Sunset Cliffs

Balboa Park is a huge urban cultural park in San Diego and should not be missed. It houses several museums of various sizes. While the museums have entrance fees, there is a lot of stuff that can be done for free at the park as well. You can easily spend an entire day at the park. The architecture of the buildings in this park is breathtaking! We, obviously went to the photography museum, which was small, but interesting. After that we mainly walked around admiring the buildings and people watching at the fountain. There are usually performances at the park and the zoo is nearby. The zoo also comes highly recommended, but we did not get a chance to visit the zoo. There are several gardens in the park, that we thoroughly enjoyed. I also loved the Spanish Village Art Center, which is a beautiful area with colorful tiles. The cute little shops in this area sell all kinds of beautiful and unique artwork and jewelry.

Entrance to Balboa Park

Beautiful Architecture in the Park

@ Museum of Photography

Cactus garden

Spanish Village Art Center

For lunch, we found this really nice ramen place called Tajima Ramen Bar on Hillcrest Ave. While, it wasn't very close to the park, we walked to the place for about 15 mins. Loved the food! Once again, "not to be missed"!
We then wanted to eat ice cream and for this we decided to drive a little bit to Hammond's Gourmet Ice Cream shop. They have a wide variety of flavors and some of them change on a regular basis. What I loved about this place is that the ingredients are fresh and they serve ice cream as a flight. If it wasn't just the two of us, I would have loved to try the flight of all their 32 flavors. But we had to be content with 6. My favorite was the lychee ice cream. Our flight doesn't look as colorful as it could, because we are both chocolate and coffee fans. So, our flight consisted of two chocolate and one Vietnamese coffee ice cream. Just wondering, why doesn't everyone offer ice cream flights???

From here we headed to our last stop for the day. Before catching our flight back, we had to witness the sunset at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. Sunset Cliffs Blvd is a beautiful long drive along the Pacific. It offers views of the ocean, dramatic cliffs and beautiful sea caves. The houses along this drive are equally beautiful!

I loved San Diego and appreciated that the traffic was not as bad as in LA. While there is a lot to do here, I think we finally made  the right choices for us. Some things that we missed on this trip, but think will be a great idea next time:

1. Paragliding or hang gliding at Torrey Pines State Park
2. Lavender fields
3. Gaslamp Quarter
4. Hiking
5. Brewery hopping (This one's for S)

Lastly, I have to be thankful to this great blog post that I found, which helped me tremendously in planning this trip.