SoCal July 2019, hopefully live

[liz-paul]

Coming home.
Just updating with some practical info from our last day. Lie in, some pool time and packing this morning. Check out was 11am and we left around then. Back over to Hillcrest and breakfast in subterranean Coffee which was OK. Only one girl working in there and it was slow, food was OK and zero atmosphere. It was cheap though, $30 ish Inc a discount that she gave us because she forgot that 2 of us didnt want tomatoes on our meals. I didn't mention this, she did. I wasn't sure whether to tip as we ordered at the counter, paid at the counter and refill coffee was self service. Anyone know? I stuck $4 in the jar by the till. After this we went to a salvation army store to donate my crutches. We really didn't want them to go to waste but left it until our last night to look for somewhere otherwise we may have found somewhere better for them.

Up the road and an hour or so in the carlsbad outlets. They seemed pretty good. Not as big as camerillo but still good discounts in Kate spade, Michael kors, coach and tory butch. I bought a small kate spade that I will photograph when I am home. Ds2 got some converse as we had promised him a pair and hadn't had any luck finding good ones. They were just over $40 which I thought was OK but not great.

About 2 1/4 hours from carlsbad brought us up to budget to return the car. We got various bits of traffic and opted not to stop anywhere else. Returned the car, shuttle over to the airport, check in, security etc. Terminal 2 is tiny and the shops are expensive 😱 do not save any shopping time or money for duty free! We got subs in Jersey Mike's for super late lunch/dinner. They are good and filling but around $10/12 each. If you're not starving you could definitely share. Re gluten free: they asked if I was an allergy or reference for gf and there was a bit of a misunderstanding and my order got done as a gf preference which meant that the bread was put on top of all the regular bread crumbs, sliced with the same knife etc. For me this will be fine, I may feel a bit off over the next few days but I always do when I travel because we eat out so much and cross contamination occurs. My advice is to say its an allergy and presumably they will prep it in the back.

Speaking of gluten, I finally got to go in the gf bakery in Hillcrest today! It's called starry Lane and is 100% gluten Free and free of various other allergens. I I bought some cookies and a couple of other things that I've eaten over the day. But the best thing was the pretzel roll! OMG it was gorgeous 😍 I ate it on its own and everyone else tried it and liked it, I wish I had bought more. If you're in San Diego and gf, then def go there. They also have tables and serve coffee so we could have just gone there for breakfast.

Waiting for our flight now - boring 😴 I will update, answer questions etc, summarise the trip etc at some point over the next few days. Thanks for reading along so far 😁

[liz-paul]

Few pics of the handlery hotel:

The pool at night from our balcony

The pool in the day from our balcony

External corridors. Although I was wrong before as there are also internal corridors in some parts of the hotel

Our room (excuse the mess!)

Our room

Balconies overlooking the car park...

This hotel really was fine. I was a bit anxious before I got there and it wasn't the best hotel but there was nothing actually wrong with it either. It was clean, nice pool, OK restaurant and bar etc. It was pretty big and we didn't see all of it. Location was pretty good for driving to everything we did. San Diego seemed a relatively small city. It is a budget option, but a pretty good budget option.

With hindsight we probably would have stayed in LA jolla the whole time as we don't think it would have taken that long to drive into San Diego from there for our day trips and it was a nicer place to spend evenings or down time, with lots of walkable restaurants, the beach etc. Although la jolla was a fairly expensive place to eat (well, the couple of restaurants we went to were). And to be honest la jolla wasn't even on our radar until we had 2 spare nights to fill and it seemed a convenient location.

[liz-paul]

Our journey home was uneventful 😁 the flight was uncomfortable, boring and long! I hate flying and I hate flying long haul lol food was OK. My gf meal was some sort of tofu lemongrass thing which was OK but it was cold 🤔 the 2nd meal was a breakfast and everyone else got a hot croissant with cheese, the gf alternative was a banana 😐😂

We stopped. Overnight in Heathrow again at the Premier Inn terminal 4. My thoughts on that are: we saved about a grand doing it this was versus direct from Dublin and that saving was worth it to us even though it takes an extra day each way. There are a couple of advantages as well. On the way there it meant that we spent a few hours after we got the Heathrow just chilling out which we needed and wouldn't have done if we had spent that day at home. On the way back it meant no one had to drive, cook or even think straight off the plane. We just went over to the premier Inn after we collected our bags, showered, had some dinner and went to sleep.

We discovered that there are bus stops right outside the Premier Inn making the bu journey back to terminal 5 much quicker than the one to get there 2 weeks ago. I had booked the terminal 4 Premier Inn as I thought this would be easiest to get to being at a terminal. Turns out Heathrow is way bigger that Gatwick (who knew? 😳 ) and getting between terminals is as much faff as taking a shuttle bus to any other airport hotel 🙄 oops!

We had a fairly mixed night's sleep at the Premier Inn, last night was better. Feel fairly tired today but I am fairly aggressively keeping everyone on uk time so minimise jet lag!

[marciehatter]

Thanks for posting your trip report - we are doing a similar trip in August so lots of helpful tips for us - think we will be taking a picnic to San Diego Zoo!

[olaf38]

Originally Posted by liz-paul

Few pics of the handlery hotel:

The pool at night from our balcony

The pool in the day from our balcony

External corridors. Although I was wrong before as there are also internal corridors in some parts of the hotel

Our room (excuse the mess!)

Our room

Balconies overlooking the car park...

This hotel really was fine. I was a bit anxious before I got there and it wasn't the best hotel but there was nothing actually wrong with it either. It was clean, nice pool, OK restaurant and bar etc. It was pretty big and we didn't see all of it. Location was pretty good for driving to everything we did. San Diego seemed a relatively small city. It is a budget option, but a pretty good budget option.

With hindsight we probably would have stayed in LA jolla the whole time as we don't think it would have taken that long to drive into San Diego from there for our day trips and it was a nicer place to spend evenings or down time, with lots of walkable restaurants, the beach etc. Although la jolla was a fairly expensive place to eat (well, the couple of restaurants we went to were). And to be honest la jolla wasn't even on our radar until we had 2 spare nights to fill and it seemed a convenient location.

See more...

Thank you for posting the pictures, this will be us in a couple of weeks, so lovely to see it.

[scottishgirl1]

Loved reading this, we are just back on Monday from similar trip, Burbank, San Diego Palm Springs and Disney! It was just great being there and the weather was amazing

[HevaDuck]

Just read your report from start to finish and really enjoyed it. We're hoping to do a similar trip in September next year. The airbnb looked so querky hadn't thought of Joshua Tree but think I might have to do a bit of research about it now it looked amazing. Hope you're all rested and recovered from your journey now

[liz-paul]

Some final thoughts:

California was really cool with so much to do and so many things to see. It really is huge and impossible to do justice to in 2 weeks. I'm glad we stuck to SoCal but even what we did do was a stretch.

With hindsight I would do many things differently, which isn't to say I have regrets as nobody has the benefit of hindsight when planning.

1. We needed more rest days. Its so hard to plan empty days when you've gone so far and spent so much money. We knew we won't be returning to California any time soon due to time/budget constraints but we needed our down time. On a similar note, we wished that we'd been leaving a week or more after school instead of the day after. Hubby and I were also working until about 15 hours before we left the house and were all started the trip frazzled and knackered.

2. The water park was a waste of time and money, I shouldn't have bought those tickets on Groupon 😉 I didn't book too many things in advance and I was glad for that. Universal studios was over priced in my opinion for the size of the Place and what's there. I'm glad we went and we had a good time but we wouldn't rush back.

3. We really can't share hotel rooms comfortably for that long. So glad we had the Airbnb in the middle of the trip and wished we had done aribnb in San Diego too.

4. Always get travel insurance. We had it and boy were we glad!

5. I Considered buying a go pro style camera before we went and it's my only regret that I didn't! I would have loved to have taken some videos around the pools, when we were kayaking etc. I also regretted not taking my dslr into the zoo.

6. Flying via Heathrow with an overnight in the airport each way was actually quite good as it gave us a few hours chilling out before the holiday really started and I think it reduced out jet lag on the way back.

7. California is expensive 🤑🤑🤑

8. When your kids only interest is wifi you will get annoyed!

Overall we had a great trip and we would definitely go back except we can't afford to and its so far away! I'm not sure what we will do next year, oh and I are considering goi g away without the kids as they really didn't seem that bothered half the time... We will also have a family break but will probably stick to ireland next year.

Thanks for reading and good luck with your own travels!

[cornishfrogboy]

A great report. Thanks for sharing.

Likewise last Easter, 2 weeks was simply not enough.

Not sure on having ‘down days’. Never done one of those in 10 USA vacations!

[Shmee]

Thanks for writing your report, really enjoyed reading it.