Vacation Pt. 3 - San Diego Trains, Gaslamp & Sea World

Day 5, Wednesday

After racing around each day to get to a theme park we needed a break from that. We slept in and took more time to get moving. We decided to eat breakfast at the Red Marlin, the hotel restaurant. We missed the fact that they had a buffet and ordered off the menu. We all liked our breakfast, even though it was pretty expensive for omelets and pancakes.We were low on a few things so we headed over to Target after breakfast. We weren’t able to do laundry at the Embassy Suites so we were going to run out of socks for the boys and Mike didn’t bring many long sleeve shirts for the cooler weather.

After our shopping side trip, we headed over to Balboa Park and spent a few hours at the train museum. Nicholas really enjoyed all the miniature trains and Mike really enjoyed taking him there.

When Nicholas sees a railroad crossing sign (he calls them traffic lights) he gets really excited, so he was super happy to get to see one up close.

Jackson and Nicholas played with the kids trains for a while too.

Mike showed Nicholas the Tehachapi area, (Nicholas even know what that is from watching videos of trains going through there). Someday we will take him there.

In the picture it really does almost look like being there.

We spent a lot of time in the room with all the little town replicas. I loved to see all the details, like the cars driving through the McDonald's drive through (they really moved).

And how they had incorporate Halloween throughout the display.  They even had a candy train that had cars carrying candy.

It was getting late and we hadn’t had lunch so we headed over to the Gaslamp Quarter.

We ate lunch at Tin Fish a restaurant we stumbled upon right on the train line next to Petco Park.  Nicholas and Mike could watch the trains while we ate. The food was good.  I had fish and chips which were really good, the boys had a quesadilla and Mike had fish tacos. The Landshark beer was perfect to wash it down.

We had a few birds eat with us. They could not be shooed away.

After lunch we walked around the Gaslamp Quarter. 

And watched a few more trains

We headed back to the hotel around 5:00.  This was the view from our hotel room. We were right on the marina. We only had a bit of sun on Wednesday. The rest of our time in San Diego was overcast.

We headed to dinner at Café Japengo in La Jolla for sushi.  I hadn’t been there since I used to travel to San Diego for work a few years ago. There was a bit of a wait, but the boys were pretty patient. Fortunately, they did have a kids menu, so the kids had their usual chicken fingers and fries. Mike and I started with Duck Potstickers and then shared a few sushi rolls (Fifty-fifty roll, Hawaiin Special, Spicy Tuna and Philadelphia Roll) which were all yummy.

And here is my favorite face again...

The boys fell asleep on the way back to the hotel and went down to bed easily.  Mike and I didn’t stay up much later either.

Day 5, Sea World

A really nice thing about the San Diego portion of our trip was that we didn’t feel like we had to rush out of the room in the morning. We slept in a bit and got ready.  We went to Einstein’s for bagel sandwiches and coffee for us and muffins and milk for the boys.

We were on our way to Sea World by 9:30. Our hotel was pretty much right across from Sea World and we easily made it by the 10:00 am opening even after getting turned around finding the entrance.

Mike and I hadn’t been to Sea World in about 20 years so it was like being somewhere for the first time. We saw the wild artic exhibit with the polar bears and walrus's  

This bird was riding around on the walrus's backs.

I love this kid....

The penguins were awesome to watch..

In the shark encounter Nicholas kept shoving me to keep moving when I was taking pictures. Without a flash and low light most of the pictures didn't come out great, but I did get a couple.

In the next aquarium exhibit, these frogs were cool, but the glass was so fogged up it was hard to get a great picture of them. They looked like they were wearing some cool wet suits.

We headed to our first show, with the Sea Lions

We weren’t sure how Jackson would do at the shows since sitting still is not something he is interested in.  But it wasn’t crowded so we waited until it was almost show time and got a seat. Once the show started he was fine. The show was cute, with just a lot of little skits.

We took a popcorn and pretzel break after the show and then it was time for Shamu. This show was a bit more crowded. The boys did fine; Nicholas needed to sit on my lap to see. He seemed to enjoy the show. We all really enjoyed the Shamu show. It is just incredible what these whales are trained to do. And I was so happy I had bought my zoom lens before this trip, or I would never have gotten shots like this from as far away as we were.

After Shamu we wanted lunch but so did everyone else, so we went to the star fish area and then through a couple of the aquarium exhibits hoping the lines would go down. Nicholas would touch the water but not the star fish. He is hit or miss on this, sometimes he will at the aquarium we go to by home, but not today.

I had a fascination with the turtles on this trip. They were amazing to watch swim.

Of course what would a fish tank be without Nemo? Nicholas loved this.

I just loved the colors of some of the tanks. I was playing a lot with the camera settings to try to get them right for these conditions. Some turned out much better than others.

The lunch lines didn't diminish so we finally braved the lunch line.  Mike took the kids to a table while I waited in a really, really long line. Right when I was at the front waiting to get the last of our entrees, Mike came to find me and told me we had to leave. Nicholas had dumped lemonade on himself and was having a complete meltdown. He was crying and saying he was sorry, and wanted to be changed. We haven’t had to change the kids while we were out in ages, so we had no spare clothes. So I abandoned lunch at the front of the line and we went back to the hotel.

We were going to try the Corvette Diner for lunch, but then decided to just go to the hotel restaurant, the Red Marlin. It was almost 3:00 by this time.  We were able to sit out on the patio, and since it was so late Mike and I just shared some steamed clams and a cheese platter appetizer and had a glass of wine for me and beer for him. The boys nibbled on their kids meals.  It was actually a nice break from the park and much better food than we were going to have at Sea World.

We headed back over to Sea World about 4:30. The park was only open until 6:00 and it was emptying out. We missed all the rest of the shows, but we managed to get through all the other exhibits.  We spent some time at the dolphins, and I even got to pet one.  

We visited the batrays/stingrays and Morrey Eels. Mike pet a batray. Nicholas remembered getting splashed by one at the Phoenix Zoo and wanted nothing to do with them. There was a cave to walk through with the eels and they were quite strange looking. Fascinating and creepy at the same time.

We watched the sea lions get fed and bumped into Jackson’s speech therapist, Jill and her family.  The sea lions were super loud and entertaining.

We finished up by walking through another aquarium then headed out. Boys were done. And yes, it was cool and Jackson refused to wear shoes and socks. After putting them back on about a dozen times all week, we had given up. If he was in the stroller the shoes and socks were off. If he didn't fuss we figured he wasn't cold.

We thought we would try Phil’s BBQ tonight, but again the wait line was huge.  So we decided to head over to La Jolla and have fondue at another place I had been to a few years ago, Forever Fondue.  This one was a bit tough on the kids. They both had fell asleep in the car and were a bit sleepy when we first got there.  There was no kids menu for our picky eaters. So we had to make due for them with the snacks we had in our bag and a basket of tortilla chips the restaurant provided.   

My favorite part of eating out for fondue is the appetizer and dessert.  Mike likes the main course because of all the sauces.  We started with salads and then shared Cheddar and Smoked Gouda Cheese Fondue.  Our main meals were a mixture of seafood, chicken and steak and vegetables.  For dessert we had Milk Chocolate Fondue, Nicholas did like the pound cake that came with it, but not in the chocolate (he doesn’t know what he is missing).

The kids fell asleep on the way home and were again easy to get to bed.

Next up the San Diego Zoo and coming home....

Vacation Part Deux

We did make it back to the hotel safely, exhausted with aching tired feet, but safe.  The boys went down easy and Mike got us a drink from the bar, which neither one of us finished before falling asleep ourselves. Anyway, on to Day 3...

We had 7:40 am reservations for the Surf's Up Character Breakfast at Paradise Pier Hotel.  That was early after our long day. But we made it just in time, thanks of course to valet parking (which is free by the way if you are going to the character breakfast).

Nicholas loved the characters and it wasn't that busy that morning, so he got lot's of attention from the characters.

Here he is smooching with Minnie Mouse

Even though he didn't know who Stitch was, they sure spent a lot of time hanging out. I think Stitch was at our table for at least 5 minutes on 2 different occasions.

Then he needed to discuss the comfort of Daisy's shoes and hair bow.

Jackson on the other hand was not really sure if he was liking all this talk with big furry things...

We ditched the walking from the hotel thing and parked at Disneyland this day and made it to the once again busy park about 9:30.

We headed to Buzz Lightyear first and Nicholas had fun shooting and Jackson tried to chew on the gun.  We headed over to the Tiki Birds next. Jackson wasn’t to crazy about it so Mike took him outside and I watched with Nicholas. He seemed to enjoy it. Next we took a Jungle Cruise. Nicholas liked picking out the animals and Jackson was smiling the whole time.

We rode Pirates next. We weren't sure if that was going to be good or bad, but they were fine.

I am sure they needed naps....

We decided to get out of the park for lunch so we headed over to Downtown Disney and ate lunch at ESPN Zone. Mike and I could enjoy a beer with our lunch and Nicholas loved all the TV’s and numbers on the scoreboards so he was entertained. Mike had Sliders for lunch and I had a club sandwich.  I thought we would be going back to the hotel for an afternoon rest, but everyone seemed rejuvenated after the break so we headed back to the park. We rode the train around the park which we thought Nicholas would like, but after a couple of stops he was over it.  Jackson did fall asleep so I took Nicholas on Winnie the Pooh. We rode the cars again, which he loved “driving”.  We took the Monorail around its loop once and Nicholas loved that.  Then we rode the submarines.  Mike and I hadn’t been on that since it was re-opened as Nemo. It was cute for the kids. It was much longer than I remembered.

When we got off the submarines, we had to race back to the front to avoid the parade and get out to Downtown Disney for our dinner reservations at Rainforest Café. It was another nice break from the park. And even though it was crowded because we had reservations we were seated right away.  The kids liked their hot dogs. It was probably the most Nicholas had eaten since we had been at Disneyland. 

This is the face I get from Jackson when he sees the camera.  One of his few words is "cheese".

After dinner we headed over to California Adventure and rode the Monster’s ride again right before it closed then walked over to Bug’s Land and rode the little train. By the time we were finished it was almost time for fireworks so we walked back to Disneyland to watch them from Main Street. 

We got a good spot and tried to keep the boys awake to watch.  Jackson dozed on my shoulder, but Nicholas woke up when they started. 

We liked the new show.  After it was over we headed to the tram and back to the hotel. It was much better than the long walk we had last night.

We got the boys down to sleep and then we flipped around the channels ending up watching Showbiz tonight. Mike pays no attention to celeberty “news” and gossip. So I ended up having to give him a running commentary on who some of these people were and why anyone would care about whatever they were talking about. Since I don’t pay a lot of attention to that either it was pretty funny. I do somehow seem to know who most of these people are and why they are famous.  

Day 4

We had to pack up this morning to check out of the hotel. We were spending the first half of the day at Disney and then heading down to San Diego for the rest of our vacation. Before checking out we headed down to the very crowded buffet and had breakfast. We got our bags from the room and left them at the bell desk and drove over to Disney.

It turned out that the $15 a day to park was worth it. It was so hot during our days there that I wouldn’t have wanted to walk down Harbor Boulevard after spending hours at Disney.

Our timing was great just as we were walking down Main Street there was Mickey and Friends coming down Main Street in a mini parade.

I loved all the Fall decorations in the park, even if my kiddos wouldn't let me stop and get many pictures of them. But I did manage a few.

We headed to Fantasyland and rode Dumbo and the Carousel and then Casey Jr.’s Train.

Gotta love this kid.

We stopped for a popcorn snack. Jackson loves popcorn like his mommy and as long as we kept the box in front of him he was happy. Nicholas decided he wanted to try soda and liked it. Hopefully he will forget about it at home, because he won’t be getting it again anytime soon.

We went on It’s a Small World one more time. Nicholas was singing the song and waving at the people in the boats. A little boy about 10 stuck his tongue out at him. Not nice but Nicholas didn’t even care.  The next boat came with nice people waving back and telling him to have fun on his ride.  The boys were wide eyed through the ride and Nicholas was signing along.  

We decided it was probably a good time to start heading out. We stopped by the candy store and got some treats and then headed to Downtown Disney for a quick lunch at the Jazz Kitchen take out location. Mike had Gumbo Ya Ya and I had a cheeseburger, both were pretty good and it was actually cheaper than eating average park food.

Then it was back to the tram and to the hotel to get our bags.

Goodbye Disneyland....

It was time to head to San Diego for the second half of the vacation. It was a little cooler at Disneyland that day, but it cooled off quite a bit as we headed down the coast. It was a nice drive and only took about 1 ½ hours.

We were staying at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay. We paid with both hotel stays with points, so we splurged on suites. We were so glad we did. It let us stay up after the boys and we had lots of room to spread out

We got checked in pretty quickly and the bell hop took us to the room with our huge pile of stuff. I had read a lot of mixed review on this hotel but we had very few complaints. Our room was nice, a little dated for a “ recently renovated” hotel. But it was still nice enough.

My biggest complaint was no TV channels for the kids to watch. To get TV for the kids you had to do pay per view. They had a Disney Channel or PBS kids option for $10 a day. Add that to the $10/day for wi-fi and the $20/day for self parking and I can see why people feel they are nickled and dimed at the hotel.

There was an Einstiens and a full service restaurant as well as a bar in the pool area. They were all pricey, but I expect that at any hotel.

Our room was on the first floor overlooking the marina. We could hear the sea lions barking from our room. Too bad it was overcast the whole time we were there, but it was still quite nice.

After getting unpacked and changed for dinner we headed out. We were going to try Phil’s BBQ, as it had been recommended by a friend but it was packed. It was late so we decided to head out somewhere else.  We drove north to La Jolla and ate at Karl Strauss Brewery. The kids liked their pizza, I had BBQ ribs and Mike had pork chops. We tried their Oktoberfest beer which was very good (and I don’t usually like Oktoberfest beers).

After dinner we headed back to the hotel. To get the boys to fall asleep Nicholas wants me to lay down with him, he is usually out in a couple of minutes. I watched some TV and had a glass of wine while Mike got Jackson to sleep. Mike ended up falling asleep on the couch watching TV after I went to bed.

Last 3 days coming soon....