Friday
Heather watched the kids for the first 3 hours, then Katie took over for the next 22. Yes, I counted the hours. Lol. And do you think those hours went fast or what?! Since we didn't have a lot of time (Katie could only do so much), we decided to stay close and do a sort of staycay in San Diego downtown.
We headed south around 9:15am. Spontaneous stop in Encinitas for coffee at Lofty Coffee. We drove down the coast through Del Mar, which was really nice! The sun was coming out at this point. Hopped on the freeway for the rest of the drive.
We had an early lunch reservation (basically all we could get, so last-minute) at Civico 1845. SUCH. GOOD. ITALIAN FOOD. Like, just simple and done right. We sat outside and watched the passersby. The homeless guy preaching loudly nearby was the only foible.
Quick stop into Blick Art but didn't buy anything. This place has been here forever! I remember going there during Justin's marine graduation.
Despite mild protestation from Cliff, we headed next to Mikkeller brewing. I'm aware their beer isn't amazing, but I'm sorry, I LOVE their labels/artwork. The tasting room was JUST as cute as you'd expect from them. And you know what?! The beer was pretty great, at least the ones I tasted. I had a couple sours and a delicious bourbon barrel aged stout.
We found a parking garage near our hotel for $15/day in order to avoid the $50/day hotel parking (ugh! standard, I know, but still). We walked around the Gaslamp for awhile.
I satisfied my craving I'd been having for a cigar--we sat at this cigar lounge for awhile and drank a Consecration. I don't know that it paired very well with the cigar. It was slightly embarrassing having the guy help me light the cigar after I bought his recommended stogie. I really don't know what I'm doing, since I rarely smoke cigars. I knew I would reek the rest of the day, and that my breath would be horrible, but... I guess it was worth it?? I wish I knew more about cigars and how to smoke them, and I ALSO wonder if the cheapies are just gross and I would appreciate something more refined, as in the wine world.
A note about downtown/the Gaslamp. It was fun, but I feel like this is so not our scene. I don't know what IS our scene, but there are just so many young douchey people and hipsters. Actually, I don't think the hipsters hang out in such obvious places, but whatevs. Also, everywhere we went, people were using the rent-a-scooters. They look so dumb on those things; Cliff was reeeally trying to convince me to use one, but No thank you.
We had tried to get early check-in, but they had nothing for us. And even at the real check-in time, they said our room wasn't ready! So they gave us drink vouchers for the pool bar.
We hung out at the pool for a tiny bit (soaked in the pool for like ten minutes). There were actually one or two families with littles there, but it was mostly kinda rowdy young scantily clad people. I wish there had been a hot tub! Although it probably would have been overrun with douches. The pool/bar is on the 4th floor, which is weird, cuz it only takes up half the floor space, as there are rooms surrounding two sides of it--making it pretty small. The view was obstructed by the rest of the hotel obviously.
We got settled in our room, which happened to be on the 4th floor, right off the pool.... We heard music late into the night, but it actually wasn't TOO bad, especially with ear plugs.
For dinner, we walked like six or seven blocks to Melvin Brewing. The food was good, but I only ended up with two splashes of beer despite ordering two full tasters. Because our waiter was.... totally high? Drunk? It's unclear what this dude's problem was, but it was one of the worst service experiences of my life--he was actually WORSE than the infamous Christina of Flying Pig who got fired for being drunk. He messed up so many times, was super awkward and didn't know when to leave, told us the Padres game was about to start (it wasn't--they were away that weekend), broke dishes, messed up the bill, and messed up the other table's order as well. When I looked at the paper he was allegedly writing our beer order down on, it was literally just scribbles. He returned no less than *five* or so times just for our beer order that he couldn't remember! I lost count of all the weird things this guy did, but anyway... I'm glad it didn't ruin Cliff's enjoyment of one of his favorite breweries.
We had considered going to Prohibition speakeasy but decided to just sit at the poolside bar, since the live music didn't start at the speakeasy til 9:30. I really wanted to rally and listen to some blue/jazz, but we were sooo tired at this point. We made it til official 'sunset' time at 8pm, then went to our room.
Our room had a jacuzzi tub, and I DON'T mean a lame bathtub with a handful of jets. It was like an actual super deep hot tub almost, with two seats. I added a little soap for bubbles, which, when the jets were on, went CRAY and almost to the top. Hope we didn't ruin the tub! Oops. But it was so fun to play with the bubbles. 😂 Yes, we drove an hour away from our kids just to be kids and play with bubbles in a bathtub. But we had a little shock when an earthquake happened while we were floating in the tub! It sounded like someone was trying to break in through our window, but then we started swaying and quickly figured out what was actually going on.
We went to bed at a perfectly decent and acceptable hour (our usual bedtime...LOL) and I briefly freaked out about being away from the kids. Just a bunch of open-ended what-ifs. But I calmed myself down and went to sleep. A random dog barking in the hall woke us both up (ugh!) but other than that, we slept soundly. I woke up early but managed to go back to sleep after awhile, and I "slept in" til 7:25!!!? Such luxury!
Saturday
Went to Werewolf for breakfast; it was good! And suuuper friendly servers. Definitely glad we didn't end up doing dinner there, which we almost did before walking out and heading to Melvin. Heh. We definitely would've had better service at Werewolf, but it's more of a bar atmosphere and not good for a sit-down dinner. It was fine for breakfast, though. Splurged on a mimosa.
Afterward, we snagged coffee at Spill the Beans. Pretty good. And that was the end of our staycay! Drove home. Seems the kids did fine other than Ryan having two pee accidents.
And now pics:
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