weekend in san diego

So, yesterday Victoria and I returned from our weekend getaway to San Diego! Victoria didn't find out where we were going until we had checked in at the airport. I handed her the boarding passes and she looked at the first pass (to Atlanta) and was like... okay... I could see on her face she was a little confused, so I opened it up for her and showed her the Atlanta-San Diego tickets. She was pretty excited. :) I believe her words were, "You're the most awesome sister ever!" That's right. :) She had been pretty convinced we were going to New York. She didn't want to tell me that before she found out where we were going, but she even had her subway card from being there in the spring and showed that to me before we left my house that morning. :) I thought to myself, nope, won't need that where we're going!! :)

Unfortunately, to get the deal I got on the flights to SD, we had long layovers in Atlanta both ways. Oh well, it was worth it! We took a couple pictures in the airport to pass the time:

Once we finally got on the plane, we had a 4 hour flight and were supposed to get to SD by about 7:30pm Pacific time. I thought that would give us just enough time to get checked in the hotel and have dinner our first night there. That was all blown to hell by the 3 hours--that's right, THREE HOURS--we spent sitting in the plane on the runway waiting to take off. You gotta love summer thunderstorms. So we didn't arrive in San Diego until about 10:30p. We picked up our rental car (we got the young manager and he upgraded my $15/day compact car I booked on priceline to a nice, brand new Nissan Altima!) and headed to the hotel. Here's the car we got. We loved it... great on gas, and you turned it on by pushing a button. Crazy!

I had done a bit of research on San Diego for things to do, but decided I wanted to let Victoria decide what we'd do once we were there. Sadly for the kid in me, 16 is too old to want to go to the zoo or seaworld. :(

So on Saturday, we got up and headed to La Jolla for a "must eat" San Diego breakfast at Harry's Coffee Shop, then some shopping, then a stop at La Jolla Cove for our first beach experience of the weekend.

La Jolla is pretty cool... we walked along a street of hoity toity shops for a while and you would never know that just a couple blocks away was the grand Pacific. Here's our first view of the water:
We walked down, got into our bathing suits and found a spot on the beach at La Jolla Cove. Apparently this is a very popular spot for snorkeling and shore diving... we saw lots of people in scuba gear and wet suits! It's not a very big beach, but they really pack 'em in!

Victoria's first dip in the Pacific Ocean! As she said, "Two oceans down, two to go!"

We walked around the oceanfront at La Jolla for a while, and this was pretty much the only place I got to see any wildlife. There were lots of birds (after looking at these rocks for a few minutes it occurred to me that the rocks themselves are not actually white...):

And seals!! I loved the seals.

Once we were done in La Jolla, we headed back to our hotel to get ready for an evening on the town. We put on dresses and then headed down to the Gaslamp Quarter for some shopping and a nice dinner. After Victoria spent all the birthday money she brought with her, we walked around looking for a place for dinner and finally decided on one of those Brazilian barbeque places where there are guys walking around with various types of meat on skewers and they just keep bringing the meat until you turn your little signal to red. It was pretty cool, and Victoria got a yummy birthday cake to finish the meal:
She looks a little pinker there than she did in that photo of us at the beach, huh? :)

On Sunday, we got up early to make the most of our last day in SD. We headed out to Coronado Island and had a tasty breakfast at a French-style cafe. I decided that Bryan and I need to move to Coronado and Victoria decided she would stay summers with us. Bryan didn't buy this when I got home. Note to self: take him along next time so he knows how fabulous this would be.

After walking around Coronado for a while, it was back to the beach! The beach in Coronado was quite a bit larger than La Jolla Cove, so we had plenty of room to spread out.

We had a nice time on the golden flecked beach, except when Victoria decided we had to go swimming. That water was SO COLD. After a couple minutes I couldn't feel my toes, then my feet, then my legs... but I endured the numbness as much as I could so Vic would have some company in the water. :) After the second time in the water, though, I was out for good. She decided she'd go in without me.

After a few hours on the beach, we headed to Old Town San Diego to pass our last few hours. Old Town is great for Mexican food and cheap souvenirs, and we got some of both there. :)
Finally, it was time for us to return the rental car and head to the airport for our red-eye flight back home. The flight schedule was misery, but we decided it was worth it for the great weekend we spent in Sunny San Diego!

(PS--If you want to see all the pictures, you can check them out here.)