I’m not used to being the one who goes away for business, so when I was invited to an event in San Diego a little while back, I brought my family along and gave them strict orders to leave me alone while the conference was on and we would all hang out together for one day before we headed back to Seattle.
My three guys had a fabulous time together and I loved seeing the pictures of what they did during the day.
I felt like I was on the flip-side of what I usually do when my husband goes away and though I missed him and the kids, it felt really cool.
So we had lofty plans for the day we would spend together in San Diego. We were going to hang out at the zoo in the morning and speed over and revisit the New Children’s Museum that we loved the last time we visited San Diego when the boys were small.
But we had all played really hard.
So we woke up and decided to see where the day took us instead. We ate a leisurely breakfast and headed to La Jolla.
I heard there was a cave there that we could explore without having to kayak or swim to it. This was an amazing site because it was in a store and it really felt like something out of Goonies and we crept down a stairway in a dimly lit tunnel while we heard the waves crash below us in the deep unknown.
It was incredible to find ourselves in the mouth of a cave and we even found a seal who was nearly camouflaged by the rock he was sleeping on. I almost expected to see bats too. (But we didn’t.)And because there were sea lions and pelicans basking everywhere for us to see, we didn’t miss the zoo too much. I even saw a seal swimming up close to people and I have never seen anything like that in my life!
We enjoyed our walk around La Jolla so much we took a big walk from La Jolla to La Jolla Shores that felt like a gorgeous urban hike and then we basked on the beach at La Jolla Shores. I really want to eat at this restaurant, the Marine Room one day for High Tide because we walked by this restaurant and it looked like it would feel like you’re eating IN the ocean and I can’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like to eat while the waves crashed into the windows.
We were not there at high tide and we were all exhausted after playing at the beach so we ended up taking a taxi back to La Jolla and enjoyed a lovely meal of tacos and horchata at a funky mexican restaurant called Puesta instead.
We found a mural by William Wegmen who my sister and I love and apparently there are many beautiful murals all around La Jolla.
I hope next time we visit we can find some more but we were out of time.
This was a perfectly lovely day with my guys in a beautiful beach town. I know we will have fond memories of this trip!
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)