To celebrate decades of my parents marriage we spent last week in California, getting back over the weekend. My siblings and I, with our families, all came out as none of us live there. I admittedly was not excited about this trip, not because there aren't interesting places to explore around San Diego (there are) or because I didn't want to spend time with my family (I do) but because traveling with three young kids is a real hassle and this trip seemed unnecessarily difficult. I, also admittedly, can say I was being a grump, I just wasn't excited about staying somewhere (a couple rental houses) where we needed to bring literally everything for ourselves and children. My mom was keenly aware of this and did a stellar job packing and providing beds and snacks and about everything we needed. My wife and I did end up sleeping with two of our kids in our room, which isn't ideal, and we never got enough rest that week, but in the end it went better than I expected beforehand.
We stayed outside of San Diego a little bit, in a place called La Jolla ('la hoy-a'), an upscale beach town 15-20 minutes to the north. I may have been projecting some pretentiousness on the locale before arriving, but I can now comfortably say it was a great place to visit and I'm happy we saw it. It probably helped that our lodging wasn't in central or downtown La Jolla but La Jolla Shores, which surrounds the (as far as I can tell) most popular beach in the area, with plenty of sand, tame waves and a playground that the kids liked, so a solid choice was made on that. From our rentals we could pretty easily walk to the beach with all our stuff and it had some good places to eat, like Dough Momma Pizzeria and Scoops Ice Cream. And we were still close enough to quickly get to the more populated side of town, though we needed to drive.
La Jolla and its waterfront are full of interesting sights, even with, or especially for, little kids. The tide pools are the best I've seen, the extensive beach has all kinds of cracks and holes in the rock formations allowing easy viewing of little crabs and anemones and more. A huge plus is you don't even need to get there right at low tide, we were there about two hours into rising water in the morning and it wasn't a problem at all. Just up the beach from the tide pools is a large protected area full of seals and sea lions. I'm sure they're elsewhere around La Jolla too but this place was pretty incredible, and I think they're there all summer at least. Due to the wildlife in and around the town there's an aquarium there, called Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It's pretty small and not the most impressive but the penguins were adorable and the side with all the fish was a hit with our little ones. Its location on the hill provided the best view I witnessed around La Jolla as well. Getting into the water is a big part of most people's visits here. In addition to spending time on the sand there were a ton of people surfing, kayaking and scuba diving. We didn't spend much time checking out downtown or La Jolla 'Village,' but it's all clearly cute with lots of shops and restaurants. The Taco Stand was absolutely delicious, everything is made fresh, though the wait was fairly long. We probably could've explored around there more.
As I've mentioned before (see Rehoboth Beach post) my immediate family doesn't want to spend all our time on the beach (though our eldest finally made some progress on his fear of the ocean!), and we wanted to get out to see some spots in and around San Diego. First up was the world famous zoo, which we, with most of the rest of my extended family, made a priority. This place could easily be it's own post so I'll keep my thoughts brief. To start, the zoo is YUGE (here's the map). It would be a completely full day if we tried to see everything without kids, and we had a big group with a bunch of kids, so in the end we likely only saw about half the animals. It would probably make sense to make this a two-day excursion if you're a completionist. Plus it's a maze, with a ton of criss-crossing paths inside some of the sub-divisions that make it challenging to be efficient. All that said, I thought it was a fabulous zoo considering the design, how much is packed in there and the quality of the animals and their enclosures. Our first son says his favorite was the fish tank and the crocodile. Our second son said he liked the 'monkeys,' and I'm sure he's including the gorillas and orangutans in that. I'll add the polar bear, eagles/condors, elephants and koalas to that list. The giant pandas returned to China in 2019, if you didn't know. One piece of advice for newbies would be to utilize the 'Kangaroo Bus' to get a break while jumping from one side of the zoo to another. All in all the San Diego Zoo is worthy of its vaunted reputation.
Another awesome location was the USS Midway museum downtown San Diego, on the Navy Pier. The USS Midway, named for the vital naval victory, is an aircraft carrier launched in 1945 during WWII as the first of a new class of carriers, called the Midway-class. It saw service for almost 50 years, action in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, and was retired in 1992 before becoming a museum that opened in 2004. On entering the ship you come onto the massive hanger deck, just below the top, where there's a movie about the battle, a few aircraft, flight simulators and a gift shop/cafe. You can go below deck and walk the corridors, seeing mess halls, the engine room, sick bay and more. It's cool, though pretty tight. The best part is up top, the flight deck, where a whole bunch of aircraft are displayed with signs explaining what they are and how/when they were used. I particularly liked seeing the F-14 'Tomcat' (bc of Top Gun of course), the F-8 'Crusader' with John Glenn's name on the side and the SH-3 'Sea King,' used to recover astronauts from a bunch of the Apollo missions. The boys most liked playing in the cockpits, where that was allowed, and going inside the helicopters. There were also talks led by ex-sailors about the catapult (taking off) and recovery (landing), though we didn't sit for those. And it had a phenomenal view of San Diego Bay, with two more (current, I believe) carriers docked across the water and all the other aircraft flying around, going about their business. To me this ship is a must-see in San Diego, and I'd suggest getting there early if you want to park right next door.
A lot was packed into that week and I had a couple other great experiences (9 holes at Torrey Pines, the Stone brewery/beer garden in Escondido) that I'm not going to take the time to expound on today. Maybe later.
In the end I had a lot better time in La Jolla and San Diego than I expected and loved all that we got to see. I'd probably even enjoy going back. Still, for the sake of having our own bedrooms again, getting enough rest and being back where I know where the bathrooms are located (a too-frequent concern with small children), it's very nice to be home.
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