Now that I’ve come down from my Mother’s Day weekend dream cloud, today I’ll share with you where we went, what we did, and what about this particular trip to San Diego made it so special.
We’ve been to San Diego before, Corrine and I took a day trip down there for Easter last month and although we’ve enjoyed every trip we make out there, this past weekend has evoked some much avoided conversation about relocating there. Avoided because we love Los Angeles so much, but we realized that SD has instant appeal with its differently paced lifestyle.
Much like L.A. it has its beaches, its hiking trails, its art district, and its blue collared corners. Different from L.A. however, is it’s less than enthusiastic infatuation with Hollywood and an overall city energy that we feel is much more calm and stress free than that of our L.A. hub bub. Just an opinion here but we really loved how calm everything felt. Blame it on the holiday weekend or the location we were at, either way we almost booked another two nights there.
This is the night view of the walk to our hotel room, complete with koi fish ponds and tiki torches that guided our way through the Catamaran Resort.
After we settled into our room we laid out on the beach for a bit and then headed into town for a romantical Mother’s Day dinner. Enoteca Adriano off of Cass St. in Pacific Beach offers up traditional Italian cuisine and gluten free pasta options which we were over the moon about since Corrine was able to enjoy one of her favorite meals with us. Pictured above, we had their meatball spaghetti, pasta bolognese, and Corrine’s GF spaghetti dish.
After dinner we took a complementary riverboat cruise that took us from the Catamaran to the Bahia hotel on the other side of the bay. During the day there are ‘family hours’ where you can bring your children and enjoy the views of the bay, and at night it offers live music and beverages to those who want to dance the night away.
The next morning before doing any exploring we took a short stroll over to The Mission Cafe on Mission Blvd which is a couple of hops and skips away from the hotel. We enjoyed a hearty breakfast with a side of their famous homemade rosemary bread and Corrine was able to enjoy their gluten free menu and specialty GF rosemary cinnamon toast! I also had a Vincent Vega, and holy moly- it’s a shot of espresso, cola, and vanilla over ice! Seriously so good!
We packed up our room (that we very comfortably settled into) and met up with our friends Esther and Jacob who just moved there from Las Vegas. Walking around Hillcrest this was our first stop, Flashbacks. It’s a vintage store located near a plethora of other fun shops and restaurants, and that would be a vanilla chai latte I’m holding from Kona Coffee Company. You’ll see me holding a few different delicious beverages throughout this post!
This is the world’s best tri tip sandwich and Corrine’s GF spicy tuna sandwich from Rubicon Deli, which by the way is the cutest deli ever! They have photos up from the 30’s and an entire wall covered in a beach photo taken from when the deli first opened its doors. Check it out if you’re ever in the area, it’s delicious and delightful! P.S. That’s totally a shirt slogan waiting to happen.
Here are those photos of me holding beverages as previously promised. The first is from T Deli in Hillcrest, a freshly pureed strawberry watermelon smoothie taken inside of Thrift Trader (all the thrifting courtesy of Corrine). The second was taken inside of Havana Kitchen on the drive back to L.A. in Temecula. It’s their house made sangria with peaches, watermelon, and strawberries. Not photographed were the Cuban sandwiches and rice bowl that we ordered.
I’m already on to the part where we drove home and I’m sure I didn’t touch on just how beautiful of a city San Diego is, but these were a few of the fun things we did while we were there. We are foodies at heart and adventurers by nature. We love exploring new restaurants and walking around unfamiliar cities. We especially loved the sparseness of the area if that makes any sense at all. It was just a different kind of vacation, sort of slow and chill which we loved.
I’ll end the post with this photo. It was taken on our first night in SD on the same dock that we took the Bahia Belle out on. It hasn’t been retouched or altered at all, and to me it looks and feels like a painting. There were so many beautiful homes and buildings in the distance and the darkness around it make it all so eerie, but in a good way! Ugh, can’t tell you how much I’d love to live there.
Have you ever been to San Diego? What was your most favorite thing to do? It was all my favorite, the food and the food! I hope you had an amazing Mother’s Day and I’ll see you later this week with all things thrifted and sifted! If you’d like to see a video blog of the weekend head on over to my channel, the video is up now!
