Day One – San Diego.
A few wee twists with the road trip this time around. Firstly we dropped the kids off at the airport and they headed to the UK and their grandparents in Scotland for a month so this is a parents only adventure.
Secondly, we drive from Texas this time. We’re only having a few days away so we flew out to San Diego to start the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco.
We actually stayed at the airport after dropping off the kids (who are accompanied by Ben’s friend Wesley) and got a flight mid afternoon. Alaska Airlines do a really good deal to a few place but SF and SD are some of them so we got a multi city ticket for an excellent price. So off we went.
We arrive in San Diego at 4pm on the Friday and our hotel was right beside the airport. So much so that we had to drive 15 mins out of our way to get our hire car then drive 15 mins back to get to the airport. We could have shuttled quicker! Note to self if staying at the same hotel again…leave the hire car till the next morning.
The Hire Car.
We wanted to do the journey in a way that was memorable so we pushed the boat out for an open top Mustang from Sixt and they gave us a ‘beaut Clark!’. Wee sleek red number and we were very impressed. It’s going well so far but I’m worried about being pulled over by Ponch or Jon from CHiPs so I’ve not gone all out with it!
Hotel.
We stayed for the night in the Sheraton Resort at the Marina in SD. Very nice hotel, you do pay a resort fee but you get that back in drinks vouchers and bike/paddle board vouchers. It’s right on the water and when we checked in we were moved from out lower tower room to a ground floor room which looked out on the bay so a nice little upgrade! We had a nice walk around the resort then settled in one of the six bars/restaurants for a bite to eat. The Tacos in Shoreline were excellent and we thought we’d be good but we should have ordered more as we got hungry later.
After dinner we moved inside to the hotel bar and sat there people watching for a little while. The University of St Katherine had a ton of people in town for some conference so they created a party atmosphere. We were pretty tired though so ended up in bed by 9pm! (to be fair that was 11pm our time).
I wish we could say we slept well that night but with the kids being on their first transatlantic flight it was a worry so we slept for a couple of hours but kept waking up when they had to change flights (they were Austin – JFK – Dublin – Glasgow). According to my Fitbit we got about 3 hours of sleep in total till they touched down at the other end and were collected by their Grandad!
Woke up early the next day and as we were awake we got on the road early.
McAllen Family Adventures 