Our Family Trip to San Diego California
Ever since I traveled abroad to Germany my drive for traveling and experiencing new places has only accelerated. There is just something so special about learning and seeing all the things travel has to offer. And something that I am extremely proud of is being able to experience travel with my little family (even on a budget). After a long Minnesota winter, my husband and I decided to take our son on a short vacation to the sunny west coast and visit San Diego, California for the first time.
With our full-time jobs and of course, my son being a second grader and in school, we planned just a shorter 5-day trip to San Diego and we jam-packed as much as we got into our days to make the most of it. In a short amount of time, we were able to experience:
The San Diego Zoo
The San Diego Zoo Safari Park
Seaworld San Diego
Coronado Beach
La Jolla Tide Pools
Sunset Cliffs
Old Town San Diego
And many hours enjoying our amazing Airbnb where we swam, enjoyed the jacuzzi, sat in the sauna and even had a little bonfire one night!
So let’s start from the beginning, we knew we wanted to spend as much time in California as possible with the time we had there. We lucked out and we were able to book an early flight out of Minneapolis so that we would land in California at 9 AM. When we travel we like to use Turo to rent our cars and this time we were very excited to get to rent a Jeep Wrangler for our stay (my husband and step-son LOVED driving with the top off the jeep, however, my sunburned head and arms say otherwise). The owner of the car brought it right to us at the airport and our adventure began right when we landed!
We found that flights to Los Angelos were cheaper than they were to San Diego so we started our trip with a little road trip down to San Diego. On our drive, we were (thankfully) able to avoid the Los Angelos rush hour and we enjoyed a stunning drive along the coast. We stopped for lunch to try In N Out Burger since we do not have that here in Minnesota and we really liked it! We ended up getting to our Airbnb in Chula Vista a little earlier than expected but we were able to find an oceanside park to walk around in and stretch our legs out after our flight and road trip. Our Airbnb hosts were incredibly kind and let us check in a little early when they found out we were already in town.
As mentioned before we did stay a little outside of San Diego in the beautiful town of Chula Vista, this helped keep our costs down and honestly we loved the location of our Airbnb. It was in a quiet neighborhood near everything we needed like grocery stores and restaurants. We were even close by to a playground (which came in handy with our 8-year-old before we could check in). Everything that we wanted to experience in San Diego was a 20-40 minute drive depending on how much traffic we ran into. But honestly, for most of our trip, we enjoyed our slower mornings as a family and didn’t need to rush out of the house… just to hit the rush hour on the highway. So we never really ran into much traffic.
Once we checked in we unpacked and just hung out at the Airbnb. Our son jumped right into taking advantage of the pool. The kid is literally a fish. And we enjoyed our time!
Our first full day in San Diego we went to the San Diego Zoo. It worked out nicely during our trip that the days we wanted to do a lot of walking, ended up being cooler in the 60-degree range and it was really nice. So we didn’t run into any overheating problems while we spent about 6 hours walking through all the habitats at the zoo. The San Diego Zoo is massive but, definitely worth a stop if you love animals and enjoy that type of thing. I know our kiddo loved it, until about hour 5 of walking and then we started to lose him but that’s okay. That’s a lot for anyone really.
The next day we headed out excitedly to the San Diego Zoo Safari. We didn’t know much about it, but we loved the other zoo so we were excited for another great day. We went in the morning and headed right for the Safari Tram. Which I think was our 8-year olds favorite. During the tram ride, we were able to see lots of animals and our guide was awesome at teaching us about them and about the San Diego Zoo’s efforts to protect and learn animals. After the tram ride, we decided to do more walking around the park, but unfortunately, a lot of the other animals in the habitats were put away so we really did not see much other than what we saw on the tram. So that part was a bit of a disappointment. However with all the animals being put away it did free up our afternoon so we spent the rest of the day enjoying the pool back at the Airbnb.
On the third day, we went to Seaworld, again lots of walking but we absolutely loved it. Our little fish (kid) loved getting to see all of the sealife at Seaworld and loved getting splashed by the Orca and by the Dolphins. Mitchell and I got to enjoy some new rollercoasters and overall it was a really fun experience for everyone in the family. We got to see many sea creatures and learn about them in all of the habitats. I think some highlights for us were the shark tunnel, the turtle aquarium, and seeing the live shows with the Sea Lions, Otters, Dolphins, and the Orca. After our day there was wrapping up, our kiddo even said he wants to move to the ocean somewhere and become a Dolphin trainer (he said probably the Atlantic Ocean though because it’s warmer… can’t say I blame him ha!)
Our fourth full day is when the “vacation” part started to kick in. This was the warmest day we were in California so we took the top off of the Jeep (which I forgot to take a picture of but trust my sunburn as proof) and headed out to the scenic Coronado Beach. We saw the stunning hotel and enjoyed the ocean. We spent the day walking along the water collecting some seashells. We even found a full sand dollar which I thought was really cool. Then we spent the afternoon building sand castles. I think this day was my favorite of the whole trip. I got to take some ocean photos, play around with my film camera for the first time, and enjoy reading a book while listening to the waves. As the afternoon went on the wind started to pick up so we packed up, stopped in La Jolla to get some ice cream, and then we ventured out to the La Jolla tide pools to see what we could find. Another thing we loved about our Airbnb hosts is that they knew all of the fun things to do and didn’t hesitate to share them with us! There were some gaps in our trip when we landed and we weren’t sure what to fill them with yet but our hosts were awesome and gave us some great recommendations for the family. The tide pools are one of those recommendations. And although we didn’t see much, I know our son had an amazing time climbing on the rocks and enjoying watching the waves crash into them. Plus we got to see some incredible oceanfront homes… we had a blast trying to guess what the owners of those homes had to do for a living to get one of them.
And lastly our final day in San Diego California :( we checked out of our Airbnb but, again to make sure we had as much time as possible we actually booked a red-eye flight home Saturday night. So even though we checked out we had a full day to adventure! We first headed over to Sunset Cliffs, where I forced the boys to take some family photos :) #photographerwife. After a quick session (didn’t want to make them too annoyed we all know how boys and family photos go) We took in some of the views. Watched the surfers which were really cool and yeah, I took some more landscape photos and played some more with my film camera. I wish would have been able to explore Sunset Cliff’s Park a little bit more, I can’t say much about it but it did look like it had lots of walking trails which would have been cool to explore. I found this spot on Instagram though and I knew that it would be perfect for family photos! It is easily accessible and has a remote-looking view of the cliffs and ocean. However, it’s a short distance from the parking lot so it made it really easy to get our kid on board who was done walking after our first three days of vacation. The cliffs are covered in pretty flowers and then you turn around and the ocean view is breathtaking.
After the Cliffs we headed over to Old Town San Diego to get some lunch, do some shopping and learn some of the history, there is a whole park there and a building you can walk through to learn about the history there. We found it very interesting (again though with an 8-year-old who is tired of walking and isn’t interested in reading or history it made this part a little challenging to fully take in and enjoy). It is a cute little area and we were able to enjoy a very good Mexican lunch and enjoy a little farmers market going on. I think there was even a “world’s” most haunted house or something so if you like ghost stories I would definitely check it out. I am just not someone who enjoys that.
After that, we started to make our way back towards Los Angeles but we had a few pit stops to make on the way. First, we needed to find a vacuum to get the sand out of the rental car. And who knew finding a gas station with an operating vacuum would have been so difficult? I think we spent an hour and a half driving around and stopping at like 6 gas stations/car washes trying to find a vacuum. I think that was the biggest adventure we had all week! Once we got the sand taken care of we started on our road trip back to Los Angeles. At the halfway point we decided to stop and find another playground to burn off some energy before our overnight flight. It was cool seeing how many people actually go to the playgrounds in the area we stopped in. I think there were 5-6 birthday parties/gender reveals going on while we were there so there were lots of people. Honestly, we enjoyed the people-watching while our kid played.
Finally, we made it to the airport, dropped off the jeep, and had a nice and easy flight home. We are very thankful that we get to travel this much in our 20s and to be able to take our family with us and give them these experiences as well. We really enjoyed our time in San Diego and cannot wait for our next family adventure.
Hope you enjoyed this little family vacation recap and now here is a gallery of highlights from the trip :)
