We LOVE San Diego

  Friends

So we’ve just gotten back from a week in San Diego, and we had a great time once again.  Not that anyone needs an excuse to go there, but the official reason was to celebrate Jan Robert’s 40th birthday, so we were also joined by Oystein, Kia and Zoe, Oystein and Jan Robert’s fathers and Kia’s mother. 

All of us had purchased the “Go San Diego” cards, which provided unlimited visits to all of the tourist attractions in the area, and there sure are a lot – and they’re well-suited to children of Daniel and Rachel’s age. 

First up was Legoland.  Now, Legoland is just a great time.  It’s designed for kids from 3-12, so none of the rides are really too big or too scary.  Daniel has crossed the 42” mark height-wise, so he could ride everything (adults required occasionally), while Rachel was 40'” tall for most of the day and could ride most things.  At the end of the day, she forgot to tip-toe, or maybe she shrank, because she ended the day at 39” tall and disqualified from some rides.

Oh, and to top it all off, it happened to be “Star Wars day” at Legoland, so the park was filled with stormtroopers and jedis. Very popular with one little Jedi –> unimportant for the other one.

 

This year, Rachel was old enough to drive, and ride all of the major rides, so it was a real upgrade for her from last year, when she was barely 2. 

She was even tall enough to ride the “Dragon” roller coaster, while Daniel got to ride the slightly larger “Technic” one, and both declared that roller coasters were great.

The cars and helicopters were popular again, but like last time, it was driving the pirate ship (and spraying water on others) that was voted the best ride of all.

 

 

 

Seawold was a first for all of us, and it was another great day.  The kids started off by feeding and petting the Dolphins, then saw the Shamu show.  OK, it' was a little cheesy, but still fun for everyone.  Daniel rode the ride that gets you soaked, which Rachel unfortunately wasn’t tall enough for.  She is a GREAT sport about it though – she was a little sad about the few things she couldn’t do, but didn’t throw a fit, not even once.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rachel LOVES penguins, so that was a natural next stop.  Daniel and Rachel were both told that they could select TWO (and only two, and no complaining, and no going back) souvenirs from the trip. 

Daniel chose a sword (naturally) from Legoland and a fighter jet from the Air and Space Museum. Rachel chose a Penguin from Seaworld (“Tenguin the Penguin”) and a flamingo (Sally, we think) from Wild Animal Kingdom.

 

 

 

Zoe is a few months younger than Daniel, and a lot of fun to be around.  All three kids had a great time playing together at the parks and at the hotel swimming pool. 

 

We went back to Seaworld on the last evening our passes were good, to see the “Shamu Rocks” evening show.  It’s better than the daytime show, but unfortunately, Rachel fell asleep at 9:29pm, one minute before the show started, and so she missed that and the fireworks. 

 

We’d been to the Wild Animal Kingdom park last year, but the kids were exhausted, and didn’t enjoy it much.  It was different this year.  By the way – the casual reader of this blog might remember that we all went to San Diego last April – but do you remember Daniel’s first trip there?   I bring this up because we have pictures of that very same airplane tug in all three postings.  Yes, the USS Midway is fun, but somehow, driving that tug is the thing that we keep coming back to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, but that’s not all we did.  Oh no.  We also went to the Zoo, the Art Museum, the Automotive Museum, the Air and Space Museum (All in Balboa Park, which is awesome). 

We took a harbor cruise, went to the beach, went to the children’s museum, swam at the hotel pool…..

 

 

And so it’s not really surprising that everyone slept really, really well every night.

 

We had a GREAT vacation

 

Daniel starts Kindergarten in less than 10 days.  That’ll probably be the next major post. 

 

Until then.

 

Love, ADRE