We enjoyed driving through Balboa Park to get to the San Diego Zoo, so the next afternoon, before we went to the airport to go home, we decided to go back. It’s a really nice area to walk around, and they also have a TON of museums and gardens. We could have easily spend 2-3 days here, but unfortunately we only had about 3 hours.

After looking at the list of attractions, we decided to go to the Fleet Science Center. It was fun, there were a lot of attractions, although it was geared a little more towards children.

We did get to see a new IMAX film about dolphins, so that was a lot of fun!

If you do go to San Diego, you should plan to spend at least 2 days in Balboa Park. One for the San Diego Zoo, and a second for any of the other museums or gardens that interest you!

Bookmark to:

Our last morning in La Jolla, we were able to go walk around. It’s a really nice area, and there are a few blocks that have a lot of nice stores and galleries. We were even able to visit the Peter Lik Gallery, so we were happy.

Within walking distance is also the La Jolla Cove, which was really pretty and nice to see. We took a LOT of pictures there! It was a really nice area though, and if we go back to La Jolla, we’ll definitely go back here to walk around!

Bookmark to:

SeaWorld was a really nice drive from La Jolla. It was quick and easy, and we passed some really nice areas on the way.

We had a lot of fun that day, and got to see a lot of fish, penguins, dolphins, sharks, and more. While I knew it would be a fun day, I honestly didn’t realize how much fun it would be. The whole day was great, and the animals were really great.

The shows were a lot of fun as well. We were able to see the Dolphin Discovery, Pets Rule, Shamu Show: Believe, and Clyde and Seamore’s Risky Rescue. All of them were were really great, and we were impressed.

I hadn’t thought it would be a full day park, and figured we wouldn’t be there all that long, but we were there until they closed, which was at 6pm.

Bookmark to:

This hotel was a real surprise - in a great way. We had stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last year, and had enjoyed it, so we expected a decent hotel. This hotel was a lot more than “decent”! The Holiday Inn Express La Jolla was really nice, and was a great surprise.

To start with, I made my reservations online, picking the cheapest price possible, which was a room with a king size bed that said it came with a refrigerator and a microwave, which we thought was great. We get there, and get our room, and it is absolutely amazing.

It’s more like a suite, and when you first walk in there is a nice sitting area with couch and TV. Then there is a full kitchen with the fridge, microwave, and even a stove! Then there was a really nice bathroom, and of course the bedroom with the king size bed.

It had obviously been another hotel, and Holiday Inn Express bought it at some point. But it was really nice looking.

They have free breakfast, which was really nice every morning. They had the usual cold stuff - cereal, bagels, fruit, etc… but also had different hot food each day which was nice. It was a great way to start the day.

If we’re ever back in La Jolla, I’ll definitely stay here again!

Bookmark to:

The Flower Fields were absolutely amazing. First let me say that they are only open for a few months out of the year - this year from March 1st through May 11th. They are less than 5 minutes from Legoland, in Carlsbad, California, so it was easy to stop there after we finished up at Legoland.

There isn’t much to say about The Flower Fields, except “wow”. I wasn’t sure what to expect before I got there, but I was really impressed. When you first walk in, there is a large area with a bunch of different types of flowers that are all beautiful.

What really got to me though, were the fields of Ranunculus flowers. The two sections I saw were very different. One section had flowers that were almost all fully blooming, and they were picking some of them. The other section was just starting to bloom. It was amazing to look at, and I would have stayed even longer if I could have.

If anyone is going to be in Southern California anytime between March and May, I really recommend visiting The Flower Fields!

Bookmark to:

After we checked out of our hotel in Anaheim, we started towards San Diego. When we planned our trip, we knew that Legoland was on the way, and loved the idea of seeing all of the amazing LEGO creations…so we bought 2 tickets (actually, we technically got them for free…see how we did it.)

It was nice and easy to get to - right off of the highway in Carlsbad, California. I will say this. It is a park definitely designed for kids. We knew this going into it though, so we weren’t surprised or disappointed. Almost all of the rides are kids rides, and adults going alone wouldn’t enjoy them. But we weren’t going for the rides. We had been to the Lego store in Disney many times, and loved the cool displays they had of a sea dragon, a family, and a lot more - all made out of LEGOs. The idea of an entire park of stuff like that really interested us, so we figured we would check it out. We also knew they had MiniLand, which took US cities and recreated them in miniature.

We had a good time walking all over the park. One section where we spent a lot of time was MiniLand USA. MiniLand has a mini version of Las Vegas, Florida, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC. It was incredible the level of detail they had for everything!! It was a lot of fun to look at.

We also enjoyed walking around the rest of the park, because everywhere you went, there were more cool LEGO creations. I even had to take my camera out when having lunch, because the restaurant had many cool characters in there as well!

If you really like LEGOs, you’ll enjoy Legoland, even if you don’t have kids. Of course kids will enjoy all the rides, but we still had fun.

Bookmark to:

We really wanted to visit Griffith Observatory to see the Planetarium, and their exhibits. We had heard there was a nice view as well, but weren’t sure exactly what to expect.

When we got there, we were really happy with the view! We got some great pictures of the Hollywood sign, as well as just a great view of the Los Angeles area. The Griffith Observatory had recently been renovated, and you could tell. It was really nice, and in great shape.

The exhibits were all really interesting to look at, and the planetarium show was a lot of fun. It was definitely a great side trip, and I’m glad we went!

Bookmark to:

I have one word when it comes to Universal Studios Hollywood. Small. I was surprised at how small it was. I knew it wasn’t even close to the size of Universal Studios Orlando (especially now that it also has Islands of Adventure)…but it was pretty small.

We still managed to have a fun day though.

The first thing I have to say is that I was NOT impressed with the parking attendants. They offered 2 types of parking. “General” parking is $11.00, while “Preferred” parking is $20. That’s fine, but when they told me about both, they mentioned that it was a long walk if you took general parking, and they had no shuttles. Well…we still took general parking, and boy are we glad we did!

Talk about close parking. We were right in the middle of CityWalk, and it was maybe a 5 minute walk to the front gate of Universal Studios Hollywood? I mean give me a break. I have no problem with giving me choices…but don’t make it sound like I’ll be on a 20 minute walk up hills if I don’t take you up on it!

We had a fun day here, and I think we both enjoyed the Studio Tour most of all. Shrek 4-D was fun, although I was surprised that the seats moved. It was a nice touch that Disney hasn’t done with any of their 3D shows, so it was nice and different.

The different shows were fun too. We watched the Waterworld, Special Effects Stages, Universal’s Animal Actors, and Backdraft. They were all entertaining, and we would do them again.

Terminator 2: 3D was also fun, since it had been a few years since we had seen it back in Orlando. Unfortunately, the Simpsons Ride wasn’t open yet (it does open soon though), but it will be open by the next time we go to Universal Orlando towards the end of next year.

I really liked walking through CityWalk. They had a lot of restaurants - both nice sit down casual restaurants as well as fast food, so you could have whatever you were looking for. It was a fun day, and we’re glad we went.

Bookmark to:

I was really looking forward to going to California Adventure. It was a NEW Disney park for me! I had been to all of the ones in Orlando before, and Disneyland wasn’t really “new” to me since I had seen much of it at the Magic Kingdom, but California Adventure was mostly new (minus some of the rides from other WDW parks.)

So I was really excited the second day of our trip when we started our day there. We had a lot of fun, and enjoyed a whole bunch of things. Here are just a few of our highlights.

I would have to say the most enjoyable part of the day was when we saw Aladdin - A Musical Spectacular. That was really good, and we both really liked it. We also really enjoyed the Disney Animation building. While we skipped out on Turtle Talk with Crush (because we had done it 6-months ago in WDW), it is still a really cool technology! The other things though, we did go through, and really enjoyed. When you first walked into the building, they had a whole bunch of Snow White pictures set up, and they were really cool to look at. We also really liked the Sorcerer’s Workshop. That was really nice, and decorated really well!

I love food, so I obviously enjoyed The Bakery Tour, and the Mission Tortilla Factory. I was surprised that the Mission Tortilla Factory was making tortilla’s right there for you to try! I figured the factory would be a pretend setup, and not be making the tortilla’s. But they were, and they were very tasty! I got a great recipe to make a dessert with the tortilla’s that I can’t wait to try.

I really enjoyed both It’s Tough to Be a Bug and Muppet Vision 3D. While I’ve seen both many times in WDW, it was neat to see how they were set up in California Adventure since the outsides of both were very different.

I thought Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sully to the Rescue was cute. I know it was just a re themed Superstar Limo (which I never got to see), but it was really cute, so I was glad I got to see it.

It was just a lot of fun to walk around, and see a completely different park. I will admit that it isn’t quite a full-day park, so it was good that we had hoppers and could go back over to Disneyland late in the afternoon when we were finished.

Bookmark to:

Let me preface this by saying that I live on the East Coast. Because of this, I had never been to Disneyland before last week, but have been to Walt Disney World many times over the years. So any comments I have to make will obviously be biased on the fact that I am much more used to WDW.

I will say that it was VERY cool to finally see the place that Walt built himself. While I know he had a lot to do with building Walt Disney World as well, he was actually at Disneyland while it was open, and therefore I think of this as more of “his” park. So that was really great to finally see it.

First off…I was not impressed with the castle at all! I took some pictures of course, but it just wasn’t anything exciting after seeing the one in Orlando so many times! I was disappointed. I knew that the castles were different (the one in Disneyland is Sleeping Beauty’s castle, while in the Magic Kingdom it’s Cinderella’s Castle), but I still expected it to be just as beautiful. So that took some getting used to.

I have to admit it was very cool to go on some of the rides that are not in the Magic Kingdom. For example, Indiana Jones Adventure was a lot of fun. We knew the type of ride it was because we had been on Dinosaur in the Animal Kingdom in WDW, but we really enjoyed the theming of Indiana Jones.

We were also happy to go on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, which had been at WDW, but was taken down for Winnie the Pooh quite a while ago now. There is also no Alice in Wonderland or Pinocchio’s Daring Journey in WDW, so even though they were geared to much younger riders, they were still fun to do. We both enjoyed the Storybook Land Canal Boats as well, which was cute.

It was interesting to go on Finding Nemo: The Submarine Voyage. Not because it was a particularly fun ride, but because it used a lot of the original 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, which I had enjoyed in WDW as a child. I really enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean. Even though it is also in WDW, this one was definitely longer with a few extra scenes. That was really fun to experience. So much so that we had to go on it twice. It was also fun to experience the “Original” Enchanted Tiki Room, since the one in WDW has been changed, and while I remembered parts from when I was younger, it was fun to see it again.

One thing I do have to give to Disneyland is their fireworks! I had heard before visiting that the fireworks were better out in California, but wasn’t sure if that would be the case. When the fireworks started off with the same music, I was getting ready to be dissapointed that they were both the same…but boy was I wrong! A few minutes into it, the direction changed, and it was a very different show. I really enjoyed them.

I do have one thing to say to Disneyland. Please, please get a few more nice restaurants. One night while we were in Disneyland, we wanted to have a nice sit down dinner. We looked at the ones in Disneyland, and weren’t really excited. So we figured we’d hop on down to Downtown Disney, since it’s just short walk away!

BIG MISTAKE. It seems everyone else had the exact same idea! There were long, long lines outside of EVERY single restaurant. We finally got to a point where we were starving, and had to eat - so we ended up at Napolini - an Italian deli that’s really meant for take-out, so there are only about 4-5 tables inside. We got Sicilian slices of pizza, but they weren’t very good, and we were stuck eating them on a bench with the pizza on our laps. We learned our lesson though, and the next night took the quick walk back onto the street of our hotel where there were many restaurants, end we ended up having a very good meal.

Overall we had a lot of fun in Disneyland. It was a lot of fun to do some different things for a change, and it was great that it was within walking distance to our hotel, as well as California Adventure and Downtown Disney.

Bookmark to: