The forecast called for thunderstorms and heavy rain but when we arrived in San Diego the weather was relatively warm and calm.
We were originally planning to go to Sunset Cliffs for sunset but on the flight in we changed our mind due to the weather and timing. Turns out we lucked out with the weather the sun seems to last a really long time after “sunset” there so we went to check it out!
The clouds were looking rather ominous though and the rain started coming in so we left and headed to Gaslamp Quarter for dinner.
By the time we got there, there was a full on thunderstorm. We got soaked walking a couple of blocks to the restaurant, which side note was The Taco Stand. Best Mexican food I’ve ever had. Towards the end of our dinner, there was a power outage so we got going.
Parking was a real problem at our Airbnb house and we circled around the neighbourhood for at least 10 minutes (daily) to find parking. On the night of the storm, we ended up parking 4 blocks from our home and walked over.
Heres something you have to know about San Diego. It’s kinda hilly in a zig zaggy peaks and valleys kinda way. Some neighbourhoods also don’t have a lot (or any) street lights and ours was one of them. So there we were walking, and pretty much the only light on the street came from the houses directly or cars coming by. So we're walking along and suddenly we find ourselves in calf deep water.
When we got home we set all of our stuff on top of the heater to dry. We ended up having to blow dry our shoes in the morning!
The next day we headed to Balboa Park in the morning. We were gonna go to the Air and Space Museum but they were closed for a private event so we just walked around the park for a bit before heading to the zoo.
San Diego Zoo is absolutely massive so we started by taking a bus tour. Most of the photos of the animals from the bus tour are absolute garbage but the point of doing the bus tour was so that we would have a good idea of the layout of the zoo!
From there we just walked around to the spots we wanted to get a better look of and took some better photos.
Afterwards, we went to Cabrillo National Monument. When we got there the park ranger at the entrance said to us, “You are aware that the park closes in an hour right?” We said yes and quickly found parking. As we were heading over to the tide pools we were stopped by another park ranger telling us we can't go down there, the tide pools are closed. We said, arent the tide pools closed in 5mins? We’ll be fast. He looked at us reluctantly and said go ahead but if we aren't back in time were getting ticketed so we bolted down there, snapped a few shots, and came back up. No ticket.
The next day we started off by going to Mission San Diego which is the oldest church in San Diego. I’m not a religious person, but I do like checking out old churches!
After we stopped by Mission Beach for a quick stroll. Despite being winter the water felt as warm as it does in Vancouver in the summer! There was also this big pile of kelp/seaweed that reminded me of a bunch of noodles haha.
Next, we went to La Jolla where we saw a flock of pelicans and sooooo man seals just blobbing around.
We finished the day by going to Torrey Pines State Reserve. Wow, such amazing views and a killer sunset too! Also had a good little hike going around in search of the best views.
On the last day, we drove to Friendship Park which was at the Mexican Border, a less than 40min drive from our Airbnb! I thought the drive would be more…uhhh, developed? When we got to a certain point it was just a dirt road at the base of a mountain for a while until we got to a certain point where it said the road to Friendship Park was closed to cars due to flooding so we parked and walked for 15mins in the desert until we hit the ocean and then walked for another 15mins haha.
It was kinda surreal walking on the beach as there was just so much trash washed up from the Pacific Ocean! Also, the San Diego side was pretty barren but across the fence, the Mexican side was bumping with roads, stores, apartments and people out and about on the beach. In our 30min walk, we maybe saw 10 people? Probably less!