My birthday was a couple of weekends ago, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I’ve never really been a huge fan of birthday celebrations, it feels like a lot of pressure to get a bunch of people together so they can tell you that they like you, and people buy you presents and stare at you while you open them, it’s uncomfortable.
I usually would rather go do something fun instead, so we decided to take advantage of our proximity(ish) and head down to San Diego for the weekend. If you’ve been reading along for any length of time, you’ll know that we are quite the fans of spontaneous trips, and generally just jump in the car and figure things out along the way. It usually works out fine.
In this case however, I forgot that I was born during what is generally considered to be spring break (also, the Ides of March, the day Julius Caesar was stabbed. Fun fact.) and also there were about four conferences in San Diego that weekend, so it was super busy.
We stayed in Yuma the first night, just to break up the drive, and had supper at this amazingly delicious restaurant called the River City Grill, it had an adorable little back patio, and I had spinach ricotta ravioli and it came with alfredo, pesto and roasted red pepper sauces all swirled together on the plate… sorry what were we talking about? It was realllllly good.
The next day we were up early to get back on the road. As we were driving into our hotel parking lot the night before I remarked that it was lucky we were so close to a Chevron, so we could fill up in the morning.
But then we didn’t. And we were at least 30 minutes out of Yuma before we realized that we were basically out of gas, and the next gas station was at least 30 minutes away. It was a litttttle bit stressful, but we made it just in the nick of time, and didn’t have to spend any of our weekend stranded on the side of the road, which is generally a plus.
We spent the day wandering around Point Loma, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach and La Jolla, visiting different beaches, and stopping in at different bars along the way. Bali Hai had an amazing view, and allegedly the strongest mai tai that exists in the world (I think Smuggler’s Cove would beg to differ) and The Wood had an awesome roof top bar.
Around 5 o’clock we started looking for a place to stay that night, only to realize that a lot of places were totally booked up, and the rest were around $300/night. We briefly considered driving up the coast to L.A., but we were too lazy.
We bought two pillows and a blanket, and found a dark residential street to snuggle up on, and slept in the car until about 4 a.m. It was really nice actually, it felt like we were back in Australia for awhile.
After that The Boy woke up and drove us to Ocean Beach to sleep on the beach so I could wake up beside the ocean on my birthday. We had a scrumptious brunch at the Fig Tree, hung out at the beach for awhile, and then started the drive back to Scottsdale so I could get a red velvet cupcake from Sprinkles.
It was a great few days, I love being near the ocean, and the general vibe of San Diego. We were already thinking SoCal might be the next place we move to once we’re done creeping around Arizona, but after this weekend, it’s basically been decided.
loveliness. 