You Could Call it a Babymoon...

The past three years, March has been awful for us. As individuals and as a couple. Last summer, we said we really need to get out of town next March and go somewhere sunny for a few days. So we started hoarding money to make that happen. When we started looking for plane tickets this winter, San Diego seemed like an affordable option compared to some other sunny places like Arizona and Florida. But tickets were significantly cheaper in February than in March. Perhaps due to all the spring break kids?

We figured February would be a nice time to leave town too, and it certainly was this year! We got a massive amount of snow last Tuesday and Ross' office was actually closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Had we known that, we would've left Monday night! As it is, we left early early Thursday morning and still ran into flight delays. A good week to be out of the Midwest, yes, but a bad week to travel.

We eventually got to San Diego 7 hours later than planned, having taken none of our originally booked flights. We actually considered ourselves lucky only getting delayed by that much, because we squeezed in on a standby flight that we weren't expecting to have luck with-- we were numbers 7 and 8 in line for standby! Incidentally (not complaining) flying at 21 weeks was already less than comfortable. I'm very very glad that we left town sooner rather than later, now that pregnancy is part of the equation! Good to know in the future...

We got into San Diego, picked up our rental car, checked into the hotel, and made a beeline for dinner. Vacation at last! We went to a restaurant called El Agave in Old Town near our hotel, and totally lucked out. We were just thinking that Mexican food sounded good, but the menu and Urban Spoon reviews indicated that the place was known for its mole.  Well, that and tequila. We both ordered different types of mole and since it was a little cool outside and raining hard when we arrived in San Diego, steaming plates of mole and rice hit the spot perfectly. As did a few sips of a margarita.

We crashed hard that night, and thanks to the time change we woke up bright and early Friday morning! Hotel breakfast actually started at 6am so we were there right along with all the old folk ;-) Hey, we didn't wake up with an alarm, and we had an entire sunny day ahead of us, so we were happy.

For anyone thinking of a San Diego vacation, I thought I'd share this since we were on a budget and we had a hard time picking a hotel: After much deliberation, we ended up staying at a Holiday Inn Express in Old Town. We weren't really sure what part of town we wanted to hang out in, and places like Mission Beach, La Jolla, and Cornoado were increasingly out of our price range. Especially since all we were looking for was a clean place to sleep since we hoped to be out and about during the day. I think if it was actually warm beach weather there, we would've wanted something closer to the water, but at this time of year it didn't matter. I have no doubt that a resort or botique hotel would've been really fun, but we were completely happy with our choice.

Our hotel was new, close to the interstate, and service was great. Best of all, it was affordable and breakfast was free! Often hotel breakfasts are hit or miss for me, and if they just have fruit, pastries, and yogurt I don't get much use out of their complimentary breakfast. But Holiday Inn is legit. They had eggs and some sort of breakfast meat every morning that I was able to enjoy without issue. (Of course, I can't speak for everyone who is gluten or dairy intolerant, but this breakfast at this location always sat well with me.) Ross loved their cinnamon rolls, and we always left breakfast happy and full. As fun as brunch is, it really helped our budget to not have to go out for every meal. Our room also had a mini fridge and a microwave, so on the rare occasion that we had leftovers, we got to take them back to eat later and save some money that way, too!

Now that we know the area a little better, we might've looked for something a little farther north since we spent a lot of time in Del Mar and Encintas, but it was really just a matter of a few minutes on the interstate, and traffic wasn't bad.

Anyway, thus began our last vacation as just the two of us! Or the first vacation with the three of us, depending on how you look at it. Even though it was short, we loved getting out of town and hanging out with each other without the distractions and stress of "real life." I'm hopeful that this spring will be better for us for so many reasons. And knowing that life is about to get a whole lot crazier made this weekend away even sweeter.