San Diego Trip

Friday at 2:30 I rushed from work to get home to jump in the car and head to California. Many border patrol stops later we arrived for the night. We decided to drive part of the way and stay in a less expensive hotel for Friday night. We stayed in El Centro California. The hotel was very nice! It was newer and there were tons of shopping around. I had researched a place for us to eat and it was only across from the hotel. A place called Burgers and Beer had good reviews. Naturally we ordered burgers and yes, they were awesome!

We woke Saturday morning to have a great breakfast at the hotel then headed out around 9:30. A couple hours later and we were in San Diego and headed for Coronado Island. We arrived at the Island about 11:30ish, parked a block from the beach and went down to see the ocean. We started to make our way up to the shops and restaurants in the downtown area when J dropped to his knee and asked me to marry him. Some pictures and phone calls later, we finally headed to the downtown area. We walked a little bit, but I was eager to be on the beach instead. We headed back to the beach and stayed a couple hours. Around 2:30 we headed to our hotel for the weekend. We stayed near the airport, next to the San Diego Bay. This was another great hotel! Nice views, good location, privacy and quietness, just what we were looking for. We settled in and relaxed a bit before heading over to Oggi's for pizza. We just had to walk across the parking lot to this good pizza joint!

Sunday we drove to Ocean Beach and walked the bridge out over the Pacific Ocean. The bridge was pretty cool because you are walking over the ocean and looking back at the beach. There is also a cafe on it. It was cloudy so not much sun was peeking through. We walked down the beach to check out the dog beach. San Diego has several designated beaches for dogs. It was amusing to watch the dogs, they love the beach and water! Ocean Beach was definitely a busy beach with lots of good people watching. There seemed to be a lot of hippies and locals occupying this beach. We thought we'd head up to check out Mission Beach and grab some lunch there. We couldn't find parking anywhere, after spending nearly an hour looking for parking and dealing with people and traffic we decided to forget it. We were wasting precious time we could be spending somewhere else near water. We headed back towards our hotel and grabbed lunch near the marina on the San Diego Bay. Sitting outside watching the boats enjoying the weather for our lunch was just fantastic! We hung out at the marina a bit and enjoyed the city views and people watching.

Sunday night we went to the Gaslamp area of downtown. There are tons of restaurants and bars to choose from. A lot of Italian restaurants, fancy mostly. We stopped for a drink at The Whiskey Girl then searched for a place to eat. After all of our eating choices we went with Nicky Rotten's. J ordered the pizza and I opted for the chicken parmesan with spaghetti. It was great! The homeless folks were out and about. I've never seen so many homeless people before. I guess if you're going to be homeless, San Diego is the place to do it.

All good things must come to an end. Sunday at noon we were out the hotel and back on the road. This trip was filled with many first for me and lots of good laughs, experience and adventures and a time I'll never forget.