san diego

As you may or may not know, I went with my girlfriend, Melissa, to San Diego for the 4th of July this year. 5 days of fun-in-the-sun or should I say, perfect weather.

We arrived on Friday and didn't do too much right away. We went to my sister and brother-in-laws to drop off our luggage. After sitting around for a half hour we decided to head downtown San Diego and hit the gas lamp district for a drink or two before we head to a baseball game (which I surprised Melissa with). We got to the ball park, which is bran new last year and really state of the art. Not only is it scenic, but its in downtown, open air, very accessable, and a really well designed park. The game was against the much rivaled Giants, which for being not close (8 hour drive) had quite an attendance of Giant fans. The game ended with SD losing 2-3, but the real highlight of the game was just the atmosphere.

Here was the view from our seats! I know a lot of people say it, but there really isn't a bad seat in the house! The cool thing about this park is as you go down the baseline the seats angle in so you don't end up with a kink in your neck. Brilliant.

So after the game we were wiped and headed back to their house for some much needed rest. Saturday we woke up and had lunch at The Farms golf course in Rancho Santa Fe, one of the wealthiest communities in the US (#3 to be exact, used to be #1). The food was great and before we new it we had to head to the airport.
We got to the airport and Dave was already there prepping his plane for our flight up to Malibu to visit two of Melissa's friends, Anna and Mike. We arrived in style 45 minutes later and were bound for lunch at the In-and-Out Burger. After a filling lunch we shot over to Santa Monica and Venice Beach (muscle beach) and did some site seeing. After some walking around we took off and stopped for dinner at an amazing seafood restaurant right on the ocean. Great food, great atmosphere, huge portions (no joke), all at a premium price. For desert we headed to the UCLA campus to a local ice cream shop and finished off the night. Sunday morning we went into Malibu for some breakfast and got to do some star gazing. We happened to catch Matthew Perry from Friends walking out, a surprisingly large guy. After breakfast we headed back to the airport where Dave picked us up to bring us back to San Diego.





After getting back into town we decided to head into La Jolla to do some shopping and more site seeing. This is the second time I've been to La Jolla and it's probably one of my favorite places to be. I think if I won the lotto, I'd have a place in La Jolla. Anyways, so we ate at a microbrew, watched some seals playing in the water and just enjoyed another nearly perfect day.


Monday on the 4th we had the privilege to head to the La Jolla Beach and Tennis club - a club privately owned by the Kellogg family (as in Kellogg cereal). We played some bocce ball, frisbee, football, and rented sea kayaks. The club then served a phat buffet dinner worthy of royalty and then we relaxed on the beach as the fireworks display was shot off the point. It was truly a memorable vacation... one that went by way too fast.