Our Weekend Away

When Mike & I decided to join the family in San Diego for Independence Day, we thought it would be fun to make a quick weekend getaway for the two of us...with a few family gatherings tossed in or fun.

We drove over on Friday morning with Sydney and went straight to the beach house. We stayed for a few hours...had dinner and hung out before heading to our hotel. We stayed longer than we planned, so we were checking in quite a bit later too.

When we arrived at the Marriott Mission Valley, I ran in to get us checked in and was greeted with unfortunate news: they were sold out...and even though we had a "guaranteed" room reservation...there were no rooms available for us. I didn't freak out...I know it's standard hotel (& airline) procedure to "overbook", and they were locating another room for us at another hotel...and they were planning to pay.

They handed me directions to the Ramada Inn, which did NOT make me happy. If I wanted to stay at a Ramada Inn, I would have booked a room there. I was surprised they hadn't booked us a comparable room at a comparable hotel, but they repeatedly told me the entire city was overbooked.

Mike was not thrilled about ANY of overbooking issue...especially about the Ramada portion.

I typed the address in the Garmin & we headed for our new reservations. We arrived at the address, a Hampton Inn...not a Ramada Inn. I ran in to check us in and the lady at the front desk said she was giving us her very last room, a suite. I chuckled to myself...a "suite" at the Hampton Inn...that doesn't go together.

We located our room and were pleasantly surprised (I should have taken pictures). The "suite" was quite large; a large living room with a small kitchenette and a 1/2 bath, plus a large bedroom with a full bathroom (including a jacuzzi tub). The bed was comfortable and we were exhausted.

We slept in (missed the free breakfast) and then headed to the beach house to celebrate the 4th.

After the 4th of July festivities, we headed back to the Marriott to check in for the remainder of the weekend. The manager was (still) extremely apologetic for having sent us away the night prior, so she checked us into a room at the concierge level and had a gift basket waiting for us in the room. She also comped our breakfast the following morning. We ordered room service & enjoyed every second of our free breakfast in bed together.

After breakfast, Mike headed to the gym and I headed out to the pool. We spent the day lounging and relaxing in the beautiful San Diego weather. After Mike had enough sun, we went back upstairs to clean up for dinner and whatever we could find to do.

I talked Mike into letting us ride the "trolley" (SD's light rail) to Seaport Village. I love using other cities' mass transit...especially when you can get from one decent place to another decent place (unlike Phoenix...Christown Mall to Uhg...). We walked around Seaport Village for an hour or so and decided to ride the trolley back to Old Town for dinner.

In 1992 or 1993, my parents brought us all to San Diego before the temple was dedicated. We went to Seaport Village, Sea World, and had the best pizza in Old Town. Luckily for us, Pizza Bella was easy to find all these years later...and we stuffed ourselves with garlic bread, margarita pizza, sigma chi (voted America's Best Pizza), Pepsi & awesome Tiramisu.

We walked back to the train and rode back to the hotel with half the city (or so it seemed on those two tiny train cars that made up that nights "green line"). It was a fun adventure, claustrophobia or not.

We settled back into our hotel bed and watched "Yes Man" that I stole from Sydney a few weeks ago, but we hadn't gotten around to watching it.

On Monday we slept in (of course) and then headed back to the beach house for a few hours of fun before Mike had to be at the airport. Unfortunately for Mike, he had to fly home to work all week...I stayed at the beach house with my family all week.

It was a great weekend. I'm sad that I didn't really take any photos, but there's always next time. The pictures I did post are the view from our room & the stuffed trolley on the way back from dinner.