2024 Summer Trip - San Diego Waterfront - 6/30/2024

It's been 2 weeks of keeping ourselves very busy in Southern California with the Pasadena Chalk Festival, visiting friends, playing volleyball, and everything else. Now it's time to relax for a few days and take it a little bit slower. Theresa had the perfect option. A Hyatt hotel on the waterfront in San Diego! And the best part of it, they have a lounge! 

Last year, we visited Japan for a few weeks seeing lots of amazing things. When T asked Alli what her favorite part of everything was, she was told "The hotel lounge with all the free food!" Well we don't have to travel international for that. We can do that right here! 

Sunday (6/30/2024)

We left midday from our hotel and drove the 2 hours down to San Diego. 

Making it right in time for check-in. 

Our room had an awesome view of the San Diego waterfront! 

The kids just loved seeing the Pandas in the Smithsonian zoo in Washington DC (they've left since we saw them), and we were hoping the San Diego Zoo might have their pandas back from China. Well, they made it back to San Diego, but they're still in quarantine and not ready for the public to view yet. We'll have to figure out some other things to do while we're here. 

Like... spend hours and hours at the lounge! At all times of the day they have a freshly ground coffee cappuccino and latte maker, plus fountain sodas. 

And if you get there at the right time, you can get the best seats in the house. 

Theresa having a little "treat" of honey from a jar. 

It's nice to take some quiet time to relax. 

One of the best parts of these lounges is that dinner is provided! There were all these fixins to make an amazing salad (according to T) plus breads, cheeses, and dips. For hot food they had fish (bleh, but T liked it) and rice. Pretty nice overall for a free dinner! 

We certainly didn't feel like we were going without for dinner though. This is a really nice hotel lounge. 

With a pretty view also! We've got a little time left with our evening. Whatever shall we go do? 

Chuck E Cheese is nearby you say? Might as well go check it out! With this summer fun pass we get 250 play credits every day, so why not go visit another CEC nearby. 

The kids love the Nerf Arcade. 

Hi Chucky! 

They do have one of the games I like pretty good here. If you get 5 milk jug tosses in a row you get 250 tickets! 

Unless of course the sensor inside the milk jug doesn't "see" one of the balls go in and you just get the default 50 points when it times out. That happened to me at least twice. 

But eventually I'd get lucky and sink all 5 balls and they'd count, giving me enough tickets to buy 2.5 Airheads candies! 

We've got to get back to the hotel lounge though! At 7:30pm they start serving dessert! 

What looks like 3 tasty offerings. A strawberry creamy gelatin thing, a carrot cake something, and a chocolate mousse cup. 

But are they good? 

Oddly... no. They're not very good. Between textures and flavors, they all seemed a bit off for us. Weird. 

But even more weird is a coincidence that happened. We were in San Diego and my brother (who is a pilot) just flew in and is spending the night, also in San Diego. At the hotel right beside us! Once he got to his hotel, he came up to see us for a visit!

Good to see you Jon! 

And he told us about this pizza place that he would always go to on his trips down here called Mr. Motos. They happened to be on the TooGoodToGo App where at the end of the night we can get a mystery box for only $4! He hadn't eaten dinner yet and that sounded great to him. 

So we took the short walk from the hotel to Mr. Motos by the water to pick up our mystery boxes. 

And were rewarded with two slices of pizza and garlic knots! It was really tasty and a really good value too! Yum! Great seeing you Jon! 

Monday (7/1/2024)

The next morning, we were too late waking up for breakfast. Instead, we got to the lounge around 11am to see what snacks they've set up for the day. Poor Theresa. Trail mix and macadamia nut cookies. Not good for someone who can't eat nuts. 

Around noon, we looked out the windows to the San Diego airport runway. Jon said he was taking off at about this time. And there goes an Alaska plane. Later we learned it wasn't him, but whoever that pilot was, they got waves from us. 

Now we have a whole day ahead of us. What shall we go do? Balboa Park is pretty nearby and there's something Theresa saw that really interests her. We'll get there in a moment. 

We ducked into the Science Center lobby to visit the restrooms and play with this electric Jacob's ladder.

Here we are! It's the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden! 

There's over 100 different varieties of roses and we came at a great time for them to be in peak bloom! 

I know we've done hundreds of Taste Tests before, but in a future post we'll be featuring our very first Smell Test! We walked around to so many different roses, appreciating them for their color, beauty, size, and smell. 

In the end, we came away with some pretty interesting favorites and a few surprises too! 

And lots and lots of photos. Just look at the recent photos on Theresa's phone. 

We just happen to be near a different Chuck E Cheese, and today is a new day, so why not go see what this one has to offer. 

Some of the games were fun and different, but overall we liked the first CEC best. 

Such frustrating timing on this one! The ball hardly ever rolls the same speed twice! Eventually T managed to pull in that sweet jackpot bonus. 

And we all enjoyed the sweet treat of Dippin Dots on this warm San Diego day. 

Oh boy! It's time for dinner back at the lounge and I'm liking what I'm seeing today. Beef short ribs, potatoes and carrots! 

The meat was flavorful, juicy, and tender. Even Ian who is not a big beef eater loved it. 

We all filled up really well on tonight's lounge dinner. 

Will the desserts tonight be any better? 

There's a chocolate cake, s'mores mousse bar, and PB&J tart. Tonight they were... interesting. I wouldn't say anything was especially good, but still they were interesting. 

I ended up getting a fresh espresso shot and pouring it over the chocolate cake, which gave it a tiramisu type flavor and it was so much better. 

T still wasn't very impressed. 

With many of the TooGoodToGo offerings, you have to buy them earlier in the day for a pickup later that night. Things can sell out too, so when I saw Mr Moto had a pizza offering again, and not knowing what was going to be for dinner, I hedged my bets and ordered it again. But I'm still stuffed from dinner. 

Alli and I walked together to Mr. Motos to pick up the pizza this time. 

And came back with three mystery pizza boxes. Some with 2 slices, 1 with 3 slices, some bread knots (no garlic) and a stuffed garlic knot. Again, I'm super impressed with this deal! Just $4 for each box! 

Tuesday (7/2/24)

It's our last full day here in San Diego. 

We actually made it for the very last part of breakfast and it was pretty impressive. Hot food. 

Plus lots of pastries, fruits, cereals, and other offerings. 

Seems like we're eating a bit of pizza on this trip, doesn't it. Prince Street pizza got pretty good reviews on TooGoodToGo so we decided to try them out for lunch. 

We walked to their store then brought the food back to the lounge to enjoy. Well, try to enjoy. Actually we didn't really care for this pizza. Somehow everything was overly sweet. Super sweet tomato sauce. A honey drizzle also. The portions were great, but the taste just wasn't for us. 

It's a beautiful clear day here in San Diego. 

We got out again to chill at Chuck E Cheese while the kids played games. 

Ian winning on Pop The Lock. His record is now 5 jackpots in a row! He's getting pretty good at it! 

And I was just having a frustrating time with the Milk Jug toss game. 

I showed the video to the maintenance guy who was wandering the floor. He hopped in the machine and cleaned the sensor, so props to him for trying to fix it, but after he left, I found it still had the same issues. 

Theresa is trying to practice Skeeball. She's getting pretty consistent too. Time to get back to the lounge for dinner. 

Prawns and rice. What's with all the seafood right here by the water? 

At least there was this giant bowl of guacamole! 

Earlier in the day, T went down to the hotel gym to get her workout in. She said it's the nicest hotel gym she's ever been to. 

Once she got back, I headed out to get a few cardio miles in. And the waterfront is the perfect place to go explore! 

The USS Midway. 

And this sea lion that was just hanging out on the rocks nearby. 

A concerned family was trying to get a hold of the Wildlife Rescue, but I wasn't sure if he wasn't just chilled in the sunshine. 

Have the kids even moved? Barely. Maybe to get up and get a snack or something. 

Once again Alli walked with me to Mr. Motos pizza. That's all 3 nights of our stay here, isn't it. It was appreciated tonight after that shrimp dinner. 

Yum! 

Maybe the least exciting offering we've had. All the same style pizza and just 1 stuffed knot. Either way though, still delicious. And still only $4. 

Our final day here. Sad day. We all stopped by the lounge for one last visit, grabbing a coffee for the road. 

And the road is actually pretty close by. The San Diego airport is just a few minutes away. We dropped off our rental car, which has been so useful for these past 2.5 weeks. 

Loaded onto the rental car shuttle. 

And made our way to the super cramped San Diego airport. It was a busy day here and there was very limited seating. 

Where are we headed? San Francisco, but only for 1 night. T saw that our flight would have been making a connection through San Fran anyway, and since there's supposed to be a Hyatt with a super nice lounge right at the hotel, she opted to spend the night instead of continuing on to our next vacation stop. 

So, I'll see you in the next post from San Francisco!