31 May 2015

Yow Yow! Does San Diego!

I had been looking forward to my extended weekend trip to San Diego for a long time for two reasons. 1) I was really ready for a vacation and definitely needed a change of scenery from the Bay Area for awhile and 2) I couldn’t wait to be reunited with some of my favorite girlfriends. A couple weeks ago, Jennie and I decided that now that we are a few years out of college, the friends that we stay in touch with are the ones that are pretty much stuck with us for life. That couldn’t be more true with this group. I was already getting an extra day with Memorial Day Weekend, but thought I could use an extra two days prior so I took the PTO, unplugged, and stayed off the grid as much as possible! (something that’s always difficult for me to do!)

Take a peek at all the things we saw, ate, and did while in San Diego below!

My cousin also happens to live in San Diego just around the corner from the beach and the boardwalk so before the rest of the girls arrived, I spent my first day and a half with her. Her home is just the cutest and oozes of mermaid vibes.

The palms I captured while taking a walk over to Ashley’s grad party house where her family was staying

Princess Ashley looking completely ready to graduate.

 

 

So Kristie and I have this thing… It’s called order 3 meals and share all of them. We were really excited to check out Waypoint Public. She had the salmon, I had the pasta, and together we shared some pork belly and mussels. I usually never order pasta out because it ends up being way too much food for me and definitely never ever when I’m traveling because I don’t like to keep leftovers, but I had a craving for it. It was worth it.

Two very peculiar things happened during this dinner:

We witnessed someone being explained the difference between a mussel and an oyster for the first time ever. #northwestgirloverhere

At the end of the meal while clearing the table, our waitress took my napkin and put it into a mussel plate of sauce completely drenching it. Kristie and I looked at each other in a way that must’ve been very obvious to our waitress because she then asked us if something was wrong. Uh yeah, girl, why wouldn’t you just put the napkin underneath the plate because now you’re going to have a mess when you take that napkin out?!

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Going out in San Diego is nothing like going out in San Francisco or Seattle. I didn’t hate it tho.

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After going out, we came home to the largest bag of popcorn that I have ever eaten out of.

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Breakfast with a view is just the standard for all restaurants in San Diego I feel like.

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Right before this lunch, we had a chance to go see a mini dolphin tour, but weren’t able to take any pictures of them or touch them because they’re super smart and stuff. It was a pretty cool experience and 10x better than Sea World! I don’t believe in that place anyways after seeing Blackfish.

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Cousin quirks

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3 meals again with Salmon, oyster po’boy sandiwches and poke with mac salad

The Patio in Goldfinch was a greenery dream!

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I couldn’t leave this place without trying an egg sandwich in between a biscuit. This is not something you can eat with your hands though and it’s awfully messy so use your utensils.

 

“It’s Ashley’s world. We just live in it!” Hard to believe that I’ve seen this girl graduate twice now. I’d probably see her graduate a third time if she ever asked. When Ashley’s family celebrates something, they celebrate hard. At her first graduation they had the same inflated head and an even bigger one in their cheering crowd so us girls were super excited to be a part of this crew this time around. How sassy are our poses?!

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On our last day all together, we did some exploring in La Jolla and got as close to the water and the sea lions as we could. The ocean waves were simply fantastic, and I think I could have just sat there and watched the water all day. There were also many surfers just doing their thing and riding the waves; it seemed like they were really enjoying it and that was really cool. The other cool part is that most of the San Diego beaches have surf shops and surfing instructors ready to teach anyone. If you’re new to surfing, take a lesson at Everyday California in San Diego and get ready to start shredding the waves like the experts! Although I don’t think I’d be up for that. We were also greeted with a strange smell and we couldn’t quite figure out what was up with that, maybe just the ocean doing its thing.

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Get it together, Katie.

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We walked too far that there wasn’t a direct path to get us back to the street so we had to crawl up the cliffs and I needed more help than everyone else. Would you believe that Birkenstocks don’t actually have that much grip?

 

 

Jennie led us over to the Torrey Pines Golf Course which is supposedly a big deal because the US Open is happening there in 2021. I’m excited because weddings happen here! There wasn’t a great opportunity to get a picture on the green, but as always, we manage to find one.

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And then we ventured over to Balboa Park where people find this enormous organ to be v. fascinating. There was also a country food fair that we stumbled upon, but were over with pretty quickly.

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Our friend from college, Allison, happens to live in San Diego now and invited us to a party at someone’s house on the boardwalk! We couldn’t say no. This is the best spot for people watching.

The perfect end to this trip was concluded with pictures of Jennie and I catching the sunset and heart to hearts.

With two years of trips under our belt (San Francisco and San Diego,) I’m looking forward to where we’ll be headed next in 2016!