I think what I'm going to do is wrap up the last 3 days of the trip in this post and then transition the blog into more everyday, lifestyle posts. Food, style, local designers, etc. So here we go.
After waking up in San Clemente, the first thing we had to do was hit the beach. Our hotel was inland but not too far, so the drive to the beach was quick. We stayed for a few hours to catch some sun (which later turned into a decent sunburn, whoops) and then headed to LaJolla to grab some seriously authentic Mexican food. The drive from San Clemente was just over an hour so it was an easy mid-day trip.
LaJolla is beautiful and right on the coast. I had been about 10 years prior with my family and swore that one day I would live there. I just need to make about 3 million dollars more each year and I can! After driving around the city a bit we headed to find food. I honestly don't remember the name of the restaurant we ate at because 1. It took us 30 minutes to find parking alone and 2. we walked back and forth a few times before finally settling on the place we chose. Wherever we ate was good (I remember Sangria being involved) and then we continued our drive to San Diego.
After a quick 20 minute drive into San Diego and checking in to the hostel (International Travelers House), we dropped the car off at Alamo (I think, it's been a while hehe) and caught an uber to the hostel. The drop off process was incredibly easy and everyone was super friendly. Our hostel was a mile away so the ride back was also super painless. The hostel was great; at about $25 each/night we got breakfast, dinner, free activities (baseball game&karaoke while we were there) and awesome roomies. We obviously had a shared room and made friends with a guy from the UK, a girl from Germany and a couple from South Korea. The staff were all super friendly and the food was pretty good! It was also super centrally located, so we walked to everything.
We had originally planned to go surfing, to the zoo, the botanical gardens, etc. but ended up doing absolutely none of that (it was a bit chilly our last two days) and pretty much shopped, ate and wandered downtown. We did meet up with Naomi's friend Alex who works for Invisible Children for lunch one day. Other than that, lots of naps and lots of food (frozen yogurt, in particular). Clearly, we were tired.
On our final day we walked to the train station a bit early and actually switched our tickets on the Pacific Surfliner Train to give us more time back in LA (our flights were both out of LAX). The train literally rides up the California coast and it is amazing.
We met up with Nour&Anthony one last time for dinner at Sugarfish, which literally has the freshest sushi you will ever eat in your life, and topped it off with froyo at the most LA hotspot, Pinkberry.
After dinner, Nour dropped us off at the airport and Naomi and I headed to our separate terminals (after lots of hugs, of course). And that was it. 13 days of adventure. San Francisco to San Diego. Over 500 miles. Months of planning and it seemed like it ended so quickly. It's been about 7 or 8 months since the trip and it's crazy to think how much has already changed since then: TWO new jobs, new friends, anniversaries, oh and I'm going to Israel in two months. Well... on to the next.
XO,
Casey
