{"id":3049,"date":"2016-01-05T08:53:42","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T08:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/?p=3049"},"modified":"2016-01-05T08:53:42","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T08:53:42","slug":"were-off-first-stop-san-diego-new-years-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/?p=3049","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Off! First Stop \u2013 San Diego New Years 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

After many months of waiting we are finally on the way!\u00a0 We left Nashville on a weirdly warm day December 29th but we were both looking forward to our first couple stops in sunny California and Hawaii.\u00a0 It is exciting to be back on the road and we are grateful for the opportunity to live in the present and make our goal of travel a reality! We will certainly miss our family and friends along the way but hope that we can keep in the loop with all the special people in our lives.<\/p>\n

\"leaving\"

We’re leaving on a jet plane!<\/p><\/div>\n

To get to California we cashed in some expiring Frontier airline points and flew from Nashville to LAX for free.\u00a0 It was our first time flying Frontier and while we enjoyed some extra legroom compared to other carriers, we did not like the multiple attempts at up-selling us to credit cards and snacks on the flights.\u00a0 We arrived in the evening and crashed after driving to our final stop at our place of stay – the Holiday Inn Express in Chula Vista just south of downtown San Diego.\u00a0 This was also free using Mayne\u2019s hard-earned IHG points (from many nights on the road with work). By the way – if you haven\u2019t stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in a while you should try it \u2013 they are usually very nice.<\/p>\n

Our first day in San Diego was enjoyed getting acquainted to the town.\u00a0 We walked around Balboa park, then down into the Gaslamp district and back up the waterfront.\u00a0 It felt great to stretch our legs a bit, enjoy the warm sun on us, and see the city by foot.\u00a0 Probably our favorite stop of the day was the cactus garden in Balboa park, which is full of many interesting cacti in the style of Dr Seuss.<\/p>\n

\"Cactus

Cactus in Balboa park<\/p><\/div>\n

The second day was a full one.\u00a0 We visited Torrey Pines park in the morning, but not until Elisa got her coffee fix (and searched around for some California mugs to sell on Amazon!)[\/caption]<\/p>\n

\"Elisa

Elisa and her coffee<\/p><\/div>\n

The park was small and crowded due to new years holiday, but it was nice to get out and get some exercise.\u00a0 We enjoyed finding shells on the beach and other decorative(?) items on the beach.<\/p>\n

\"Torrey

Torrey Pines Beach<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Elisa's

Elisa’s new necklace<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Some

Some neat shells that we wanted to bring home but took a souvenir photograph of instead.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

In the evening we visited La Jolla and the nearby cove to check out the seals. There were tourists everywhere taking photos so we joined in on the action! The seals were surprisingly patient as well – some people were even petting them. Elisa almost stepped on one that was in the shadow of a rock.<\/p>\n

\"Lone

Lone seal<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Tourists

Tourists taking photos of seals<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Snuggly

Snuggly seals<\/p><\/div>
\n

These two seals were kinda hidden from the crowds.. but I found them!<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

The town of La Jolla itself was very nice. It seemed very upscale with many designer clothing shops and an oddly high number of investment banks.<\/p>\n

\"Sunset

Sunset in La Jolla<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Another

Another photo of us – loving warm southern california<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

For dinner I got to enjoy a beer from the Lost Abbey brewery, which is ranked as one of the best in the US. I wasn’t that impressed. The beer selections in the stores everyone here are very good and most of them sell single bottles, which is great when you don’t want to commit to a whole six-pack. There are a lot more large bomber bottles though, which is less than ideal.<\/p>\n

\"Lost

Lost Abbey beer – meh<\/p><\/div>\n

The next day we visited the famous San Diego zoo. Admittance was steep at $40 but we found out well worth it. It was by far the largest zoo that either of us had been too. We liked how each enclosure had information regarding conservation and how endangered the species was. Also, there were neat life-size statues of the closest historic relative to the species that was already extinct. It helped to bring home the conservation message and was fun to compare the current species in size – some of the extinct ones were huge! Our favorite enclosures were the orangutans, the meerkats and the fox with pointy ears.<\/p>\n

\"This

This cute critter from Africa reminded us of Nick<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Meerkats

Meerkats on the lookout<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"We

We enjoyed watching these apes – the baby Orangutan was a hoot.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Our final evening in San Diego was at Coronado island, which is home to the Hotel del Coronado and one of the best beaches (supposedly) in California. The hotel is one of the largest all-wood structures remaining in the US and harks back the roaring 1920s. We were impressed with the ice skating rink on the back deck, which was a unique juxtaposition with the beach just 100 feet away. The rest of the town was quaint, with many fun shops to browse. <\/p>\n

\"Hotel

Hotel del Coronado<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"The

The pastel sunset was wonderful this night. It complemented the historic hotel del Coronado perfectly<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Hotel

Hotel del Coronado at night<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Next stop is the big island of Hawai’i, where we will be staying for about a week.<\/p>\n

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After many months of waiting we are finally on the way!\u00a0 We left Nashville on a weirdly warm day December 29th but we were both looking forward to our first couple stops in sunny California and Hawaii.\u00a0 It is exciting to be back on the road and we are grateful for the opportunity to live in the present and make our goal of travel a reality! We will certainly miss our family and friends along (more…) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,255],"tags":[259,257,258],"class_list":["post-3049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-states","category-world-trip","tag-beach","tag-california","tag-san-diego"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/coronado.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3049"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3060,"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions\/3060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.travelingthieles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}