One of my best friends had plenty of wonderful things to say about her time at Coronado Island, just a quick 10 minute drive from downtown San Diego, so we chose to stay on the island rather than in the downtown area. Once we’d decided to stay on Coronado, I had to choose from the handful of hotels there. The famous Hotel del Coronado was a bit out of our price range at $400+/night, so we settled on the El Cordova Hotel just across the street. It is an old mansion that’s now divided into 40 guest rooms. Although I was the tiniest bit hesitant about booking a hotel room where the door opens to the outside (always a big no-no in my book), the hotel was the very opposite of creepy and was absolutely fantastic. (More about El Cordova Hotel + pictures of the hotel here.)

After getting some much-needed rest, we headed out in our rental car to explore downtown San Diego. We had plenty of things on our to-do list, but were just taking the day in stride and trying to be flexible, not rushed. We headed to Balboa Park, one of the top must-see attractions in the city and home of the San Diego Zoo. I have to admit that I wasn’t too pumped about spending the morning in a park (it seemed a little boring to me), but it was the top-rated attraction in San Diego, so we decided to give it a shot. It turned out to be anything but boring and we spent a long morning exploring the botanical gardens, the many museums and scenery of the extraordinary park. One of the best parts? Free Admission!

Balboa Park

Balboa Park has plenty of free parking, so we pointed Google Maps to Inspiration Point lot, just outside of the park. A free tram service picked us up quickly (they run every 10 minutes starting at 9am), and took us to the park– which was only about a 4 minute trolley ride and (it turns out…) totally walkable. We were dropped off at Plaza de Panama, which is right in the heart of Balboa Park. The Visitor’s Center opened at 9:30am, so, while we waited to grab a map and get our bearings there, we walked down El Prado Road, past the Museum of Natural History and found a beautiful garden of cactuses. It really felt like we were in the Southwest then! The weather was shaping up to be a gorgeous day, so we enjoyed walking around the park and seeing the beautifully manicured lawns and dramatic architecture of each building. Balboa Park began as 1,400 acres set aside by the city government in 1868 and really started “blossoming” with the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition, which commemorated the opening of the Panama Canal. This exposition provided a momentum for city officials to continue improving the park, and many of the exhibits and museums were created for this exposition.

After a quick run through the Visitor’s Center’s gift shop, we headed to the Botanical Gardens which have free admission (but don’t open until 10am). If you like orchids, this building is a must-see because there are all shapes, sizes and varieties of orchids on display, along with many other exotic flowers and plants. Although the lily pond outside of the Botanical Gardens is strangely missing its lilies, it’s still a beautiful site.

From the Botanical Gardens, we walked past the Museum of Man which had a beautiful tower and Spanish-tiled dome. We opted out of the museums for lack of time, but I’ve heard many good things about the museums — and, of course, the San Diego Zoo, which is also located inside the park. After pausing at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion (a beautiful outdoor pavilion), we headed to the UN International Gift Shop where many trinkets from all over the world were on display. Unfortunately, the nearby Hall of Nations was closed for renovations, but we got to look inside each one — these small cottages offer a window into each country. For example, the House of Scotland was decorated with tartan plaid curtains.

After a morning at Balboa Park, we headed into Old Town to try some authentic Mexican food. Because San Diego is only 18 miles from Tijuana, Mexico, we couldn’t pass up being so close to the country without trying its food. We fell in love with Casa Guadalajara:  a colorful, delightful lunch experience with one of the best patios. The food was delicious – and, after we told them we’d be in a bit of a hurry, it came out almost immediately.

Casa Guadalajara

Casa Guadalajara

After lunch, we barreled down another one of San Diego’s many freeways toward our harbor cruise. When doing a bit of research, I came across a fantastic deal on a 2 hour harbor cruise with Hornblower Cruises. On Goldstar.com (a site similar to Groupon, but for events), I purchased two tickets for less than the regular price of one ($27.00/2 vs. $28.00/1 at the window). We picked up our tickets at Will Call with no trouble and waited by the harbor to begin our two-hour cruise on the Admiral ship.

While waiting, we hopped next door to see the USS Midway and its famous statue (commemorating the end of WWII).

USS Midway

Unconditional Surrender statue at the USS Midway

The Admiral was kept very clean and was one of the nicest tourist ships I’d been on. We were a bit disappointed in the narration as they didn’t share as much history of the city as we’d hope — just pointed out landmarks (and sea lions!) as we passed them. Overall, though, the cruise was a fantastic afternoon activity with beautiful views of the San Diego skyline — really a must-do activity when visiting San Diego.

The best part was that the weather (even in February) was warm enough to enjoy sitting on the outside deck of the ship as we sailed the harbor. We hopped off after the first hour of the South Bay and skipped the second hour of the cruise (the ship comes back to port for those who have just purchased a one-hour tour) because it was late afternoon by this point and we wanted to explore Coronado Island.

We drove back into Coronado and set out for a walk just as the sun was setting. Our hotel, El Cordova, was just across from the beach, so we were able to enjoy our first Californian sunset from the sand. We walked up toward the Hotel del Coronado (a grand Victorian hotel built in 1888) and enjoyed the bustling atmosphere of the many restaurants on the hotel’s back patio with patrons enjoying cocktails or early dinner outside. The weather couldn’t have been nicer and we were tempted to split an $18 hamburger just to enjoy the view, but we chose instead to walk through the many shops on the lower level of the hotel. The Hotel del Coronado is a magnificent building, the West Coast’s version of the Greenbrier. The mahogany and oak detail in the large lobby is stately and inviting, and the gift shop boasts the hotel’s history, steeped with stars and old-timey pictures. Interestingly, the hotel is the second-largest wooden structure in the US, so it’s looming stature can be seen from all over the island– and we even spotted it on our harbor cruise.

Hotel del Coronado

After enjoying the sights at the “Hotel Del”, we walked down Orange Ave., another bustling street for a Wednesday night. Chochtky shops and restaurants reign on this strip, but it doesn’t feel cheap at all. We settled on Village Pizzeria for dinner as it offered outdoor patio seating facing the street (for prime people-watching). We split one 10-inch pizza and were extraordinarily happy with the divine Billy Goat pizza ($18). This pizza was piled high with spinach, roasted red peppers, red onion, oven-roasted tomatoes, basil, balsamic and goat cheese. Although it was lacking red sauce and meat (usually two things I never go without on a pizza), it was filling and extra-extra-flavorful!

Although we only spent a few hours exploring Coronado, we didn’t find it as expensive as its rumored to be and the hotel prices were comparable to downtown San Diego– no more expensive and no “island tax!” We were especially happy to stay on Coronado in lieu of downtown because of the extra character we found in the cute island atmosphere.

For our final morning in San Diego, we spent our last few hours in La Jolla before heading north. La Jolla is a few minutes north of downtown and is rumored to be the “ritzy” island. We headed toward La Jolla Cove — enjoying the beautiful green hills along the way. La Jolla Cove used to be where children would swim, but, in the past decade, the sea lions have taken over the cove. Despite the terrible smell, we so enjoyed seeing the sea lions up close. They were too busy bathing in the sun light to notice us, though!

La Jolla Cove

Sea Lions at La Jolla Cove

Once at the cove, we took the steps down to the small beach and were awed by the small mass of swimmers who were swimming clear across the bay! We spent the morning basking in the warm sun, enjoying the views and watching the swim caps bobbing along the ocean on their way across the bay. It was the perfect ending to our time in San Diego and definitely worth a trip to the north end of the city.

All-in-all, we so enjoyed our short time in San Diego, finding its small-town charm to far outweigh its winding freeways and skyscrapers. With no lack of personality, visitors to this southern California gem will surely leave satisfied– I know we did.

The post 1.5 Days in San Diego first appeared on Weekend Blitz.

My mom had just applied for the US Airways Premier World MasterCard over Thanksgiving, so she received the Companion Certificate in the mail in late December. A little more on the Companion Certificate: this certificate is good for up to two passengers traveling with the card holder on a round-trip Coach Class ticket on US Airways operated flights (so, no partner flights allowed). The credit card holder purchases his/her ticket at regular price and then (on the same charge) purchases up to two companions’ tickets for $99 + tax each. Again, this certificate is only valid for flights within the continental US, so it’s a better bang for your buck to purchase the most expensive ticket (i.e., cross-country) to get a higher percentage off with your companion pass. It looks like the US Airways Premier World MasterCard is still around (there was some talk that it would be a thing of the past come January 2015), and it’s still advertising a Companion Certificate. I was under the impression that the Companion Certificate would also be going away in 2015, but maybe they’ve decided to let it stick around a bit longer?

Side Note: My mom originally applied for this credit card for the awesome 50,000 bonus points with first purchase and payment of $89 annual fee (no need to spend thousands of dollars in the first few months to get the bonus!). These points will become American Airlines AAdvantage points in the second quarter of 2015 and, coupled with the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select MasterCard she applied for at the same time (which got her an additional 50,000 American points), she’ll have a whopping 100,000 points in the bank — enough to visit Europe twice (or Asia once, with enough points leftover to warrant a free domestic US round-trip!). So, this California trip is a bonus that we didn’t even consider before she applied for the credit cards.

We wanted to take as much advantage of the companion ticket as possible, so we were looking for somewhere pretty far from South Carolina (while still staying within the contiguous 48 states). We settled on southern California because, quite frankly, the weather in much of the rest of the US (excluding the Southeast) is pretty frightful in early February. And, with Winter Storm Juno rolling in the week before our departure (with another snowstorm right on its heels), our sunny destination couldn’t have been better.

We ended up booking my mom’s ticket about six weeks out from Charlotte (CLT) to San Diego (SAN) at $390 and tacking my Companion Certificate on for the additional $99 + taxes, which came out to be $141.20 extra — a pretty significant savings from buying two normal tickets.

The weather forecast for the first week in February looked like the peak of spring time on the East Coast: highs in the low-70s and lows in the mid-50s. I’ll take it!

Our itinerary ended up looking like this:

2 nights in San Diego
3 nights in the Santa Barbara area
1 night in San Diego

We’d heard great things about Coronado Island (just across the harbor from downtown San Diego), so I knew we wanted to stay there. The famous Hotel del Coronado (a Victorian wooden monstrosity — as in, the second largest wooden structure in the US) was a bit out of our price range at $400+/night, so I did some Trip Advisor-ing and ended up booking our first two nights at the Hotel El Cordova, just across the street from the gigantic “Hotel Del”. At almost one-quarter of the price, the location is just as fabulous and its a charming little Spanish-style hotel.

El Cordova Hotel sits overlooking its more famous counterpart and, interestingly, was actually the private home of the main builder of the grander hotel in the late 1800’s. The Spanish-style mansion has been converted into motel-style rooms ranging in size. The lobby is on the street facing the Hotel del Coronado and is just steps away from the beautiful beach and cute shops and restaurants. The rooms are circled around an inner courtyard with plenty of Spanish tiles and bright, colorful flowers to drool over on your walks to and from the lobby.

The quaint and quite romantic hotel is perfect — even the breakfast is just right: a small continental breakfast is included, and the best part is that it’s served in the courtyard, surrounded by beautiful flowers, delicate succulents and beautiful weather.

Check out a few photos from our stay at El Cordova:

El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Grounds of El Cordova Hotel

Continental Breakfast is included

Continental Breakfast is included

Continental Breakfast is included

Continental Breakfast is included

Continental Breakfast is included

Although the rooms are pretty small and basic, the public parts of the hotel are beautiful and we felt very safe — which was ideal for us since we weren’t spending much time at the hotel.

Balboa Park
Old Town for lunch (Casa Guadalajara)
Harbor Tour
Exploring the Hotel del Coronado + Coronado Island

After a packed first day, we planned to finish our time in San Diego by exploring La Jolla, a nearby island and beach with sea caves and seals. Yes, please. Although I’m sure we could spend days in La Jolla alone, our week-long trip to Southern Cal was starting to get booked up quickly, so we planned our second day like this:

Morning in La Jolla with brunch + sea caves
San Juan Capistrano Mission
late lunch in Malibu
Pepperdine University
Drive into Ventura, CA

Although we would have loved a little more time in San Diego, we wanted to start heading up the coast toward Santa Barbara to give us time to stop along the way. We have a friend who lives in the area who insisted we drive through Pepperdine, calling it the prettiest university campus in the US. With helpful tips like Pepperdine and the San Juan Capistrano Mission, we had another jam-packed day ahead of us, but it really helped to break up the drive up the coast.

We arrived in Ventura in time for dinner and an early night to rest up for our next day of adventures. As you may have read about, Jeffrey’s recently gotten the Club Carlson credit card and this hotel chain’s Winter 2015 promo was the best of the bunch, so we settled on the Country Inn and Suites in Ventura for our nights in the Santa Barbara area. Although the hotel is about 25 minutes south of Santa Barbara, it was much cheaper than any other hotel that week because of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, plus we earned an extra 30,000 bonus points for our 3-night stay– enough for several free nights in nicer Carlson hotels around the world! For more info on the Club Carlson Winter 2015 promo (going on through March 29), click here.

The next morning, we had planned to drive back down toward San Diego about 45 minutes to Simi Valley, CA — not the most ideal plan, but we booked hotels and planned our stays then had to reschedule a little in order to meet up with a friend from our hometown for a tour of the Ronald Reagan Library, which was on the top of my mom’s list. That day, our itinerary looked like this:

Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library
Drive back up toward Santa Barbara
Explore Santa Barbara, including the Old Mission, antique shops + the pier!

On the next day, we were headed up a little north of Santa Barbara:

Morning at the Gainey Winery in Santa Ynez, CA
Afternoon on a ranch in Lompac, California with some friends

On our final full day in California, we needed to make our way back down to San Diego for our flight on Monday morning. We’d booked a hotel on the northern outskirts of San Diego so we didn’t have to drive all the way into the city the night before, giving us a little more time to explore on our way back down the coast. Our last day’s itinerary looked like this:

Santa Monica Pier
Lunch in Hollywood
Looking for stars before the Grammy’s!

We made our way back down toward San Diego with our final night’s stay booked at the Hyatt Place Vista/Carlsbad. We were trying to balance easy location with affordable cost and settled on the Hyatt Place because it was on our way back into town, so we didn’t need to pay the high premium of staying in the city if we were getting in late and leaving early. For our last dinner, we tried a fun wine bar in Encinitas, CA.

More details on our stops and tours coming up soon!

The post Planning My Very First Trip to California first appeared on Weekend Blitz.