San Diego

We just returned from our family trip to San Diego. It was Eric and Maeve's first visit and Kate got to do new things that she usually doesn't get to do since the most recent trips to Sunny Southern California have been for work and the last trip was with her family 17 years ago.

As you'll see in the pictures, Maeve had a great time. She is talking a lot and gets really excited about certain things. Here are a few of her favorites:

• Favorite meal time: breakfast - she loved the endless options at the buffet but we didn't enjoy having to wait 1.5 hours after she woke up to go down there since they had weekend and holiday hours and breakfast didn't start until 7am (yes, we were up between 5:30 and 6am every morning)


• Favorite snack: trail mix with M&M's and peanuts


• Favorite activity: anything "outside" as she would ask to go outside all the time. She also said "pool" when she wanted to go swimming. She enjoyed jumping on the hotel bed and bringing mom and dad "mommy's shoes and daddy's shoes." Don't you wonder if kids would be happy just going to any hotel in any city? That seems to be the best part sometimes.


• Favorite outing: the zoo and the beach. She really loved Coronado beach (as did we all and decided on a last minute impromptu morning in Coronado after "driving by to see it" and realizing that we had to make a morning out of it). Maeve didn't seem to mind the intense rip currents but it was scary to watch her every second in the water to make sure she didn't fall down. Lifeguards drove by in a truck every 15 - 20 min and told everyone to get out of the water for 5 minutes until the rip current passed by. Eric and I have also never seen such large waves. You'll see them in one of the pictures. To keep Maeve playing in the sand we got some red solo cups because apparently it's Back to School season at the stores and no one was selling beach toys anymore so we made it work. We also liked La Jolla cove and beach for the scenes but we went on Sunday so the shops were closed and there was seaweed in the water.

Eric and Kate enjoyed the same activities as Maeve. We also loved the food. We had one of our favorites - In n Out burger and great seafood and Mexican food. We also enjoyed the views from Point Loma and the Zoo was well worth it. We lucked out and were able to book a 'Breakfast with the Pandas' tour the day before we went (they usually sell out months in advance) and that was a great experience. We got to the zoo before it opened and with only 10 other people were able to see the Pandas. On a normal day you may have to wait over an hour to see that exhibit. We also got a behind-the-scenes look of the Giraffes and Elephants. We even got to feed the Giraffes. Maeve wasn't as impressed with getting too close to the animals but we loved it.

We stayed downtown in the Gaslamp district but if we had to do it again we'd probably just make a beach trip out of it and stay in Coronado or somewhere off the Interstate and just drive to everywhere we need to be. We felt like there was a nightclub in our hotel room on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night which wasn't enjoyable for people that needed to go to bed at 9pm in order to wake up with a toddler. Oh how vacations (or should I just refer to it as a family trip since it's not very relaxing) have changed.