Just Another Day in PARADISE!

One of our family’s favorite things about summer is going on vacation...or several vacations if we’re proactive enough and make plans to do so! And normally we like to make our vacation plans well in advance…like at least 6 months! Well we broke tradition this year! We made plans 6 months in advance all right, but it was to go to Nauvoo but at the last minute we decided that it was going to be way too expensive, so we canned that idea and decided we’d go somewhere else instead...but where? It took us a while to decide, but when Rod suggested going to San Diego, we all loved that idea and knew that was exactly what we wanted to do!

Rod and I sat down to make reservations, but finding the “perfect” hotel online isn’t as easy as one would like to believe. In fact, aside from the number of “stars” or the customer ratings, it was almost impossible to decide which $100+ a night hotel was going to be the best deal for our money...and one thing was for sure, if we were spending that much, we definitely wanted to get our money’s worth!

We finally ended up calling a travel agent to see if they could offer us any good deals that we couldn’t find online…and boy are we glad that we did! Before we called, we had pretty much decided that we were just going to stay at a Holiday Inn Express because Rod and I both knew that that would be a safe choice, but our travel agent found us a deal that was “too good to pass up”! And best of all, it was only a little bit more money than our “safe choice”!

The hotel that our agent found us was called Paradise Island Spa and Resort…and it was just that, a true paradise! If we wouldn’t have known better, we would have thought we were on some tropical island somewhere! It was beautiful! The resort was on Mission Bay right across the street from Seaworld. The entrance to the resort was a long palm tree lined road and our “room” was a bungalow with a patio overlooking a pond that was surrounded by palm trees. There were 5 pools scattered throughout the resort and one of those happened to be right across the road from our room. It was perfect and worth every bit of what we paid for it!

This is the front door of our bungalow

This is our view from our front door

This is our room

Each day that we were there, we had a $40 allowance that we could use to eat at any of the 3 restaurants on the resort property, which sounded like a good deal. We did decide though that we’d probably get the most for our money if we used that credit for breakfast, so every day we started our morning at the Barefoot Bar and Grill eating on the patio overlooking the ocean…and the breakfasts were wonderful! Oh and did I happen to mention that this place was perfect?

Waiting to be served our breakfast!

Following the ducks along the boardwalk around our hotel

Rod was happy to be out of the car

We left home early on a Monday morning and drove all the way to San Diego in one day. That was a trip that none of us were looking forward to repeating on Friday when we had to go home, but it wasn’t so bad on the way because we were all full of anticipation! After driving all day, we checked into the hotel, went and got something to eat and then the boys came back and swam until it was time to go to bed!

The entrance to the resort

After a long day of driving...a dip in the pool was nice!

On Tuesday morning we got up and drove across the street to Seaworld. We would have walked but it was a little too far for that. I hadn’t been to Seaworld since I was probably 10 years old, so it was as exciting for me as it was for the boys. We saw all sorts of sea life including dolphins that the boys were able to pet, we rode the Skytower Ride and the Bayside Skyride, we saw the Shamu show, the dolphin show and the sea lion show, and the boys rode on Shipwreck Rapids. They had to do that one without me though because I didn’t really want to get wet and it wasn’t really warm enough to get wet anyway! We left the park long enough to go and get some dinner, and then we came back to watch the Shamu night show and fireworks before heading back to “paradise”!

Ready to start our day at Seaworld

Waiting to ride The Skytower Ride

The boys got front row seats at the Sea Lion show

Slug Bug Shamu!

Petting the dolphins

Waiting for the Shamu show to start

Shamu - times 2

The dolphin show

Picnic in the parking lot for lunch

Shamu at night!

We spent Wednesday at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. We bought tickets to ride the tram so that’s what we decided to do first. The ride itself was at the opposite end of the park, so we had quite a walk just to get there. I was so excited to see all of the wildlife, but I was a little disappointed when I realized that the tram ride was much shorter than it had been when Rod and I were there right after we got married…probably 13 years ago! The boys didn’t know any different though, so they loved it...and we still saw lots of wildlife! And what we didn’t get to see on the tram, we still got to see...we just had to walk to it! Probably one of our favorite exhibits was the elephants because there was a brand new baby elephant. The boys and I could have stood there and watched them for hours!

Where to now mom?

Getting Rod to pose for a pic was a rare thing - this was my favorite photo of the whole trip!

Riding the rhino

We actually got Connor to pet the animals - that's even more rare than a picture with Rod!

Our view from the Tram Ride

The baby elephant was one of our favorites

On the way home from the Wild Animal Park, we made Rod take us by the temple. I got out to take a few pictures but I felt a little awkward in my levis so I didn’t go too far. It’s a beautiful temple!

Thursday was our last day in San Diego. We decided that we’d spend that day going to the Mormon Battalion Historic Site and to the beach. We had no problem finding the Mormon Battalion Historic Site and while we were there, we went on their little tour and the boys got to plan for gold. I just enjoyed spending time with other LDS people for a while. You don’t realize how much you miss that until you spend a few days away from Utah! Finding the beach wasn’t quite as easy though. We thought we’d go out to Coronado Island and find a fun place for the boys to swim, but finding open beach front wasn’t that easy. We eventually found a beach back near our hotel so that the boys could at least go and wade for a few minutes, but they were more excited to go back to the hotel and swim...so that’s what we ended up doing!

Going to breakfast

At the Mormon Battalion Historic Site

Panning for gold - and they even found some!

We finally found the beach!

Dinner was at the restaurant where they filmed Top Gun

Overall, we had a wonderful week and when it came time to go home, I was sad, just like I usually am. We were especially sad about the long drive ahead of us. But at least we now know what it’s like to spend a week in Paradise!