At the end of January, I visited San Diego to celebrate my birthday. It was the perfect little weekend getaway to celebrate being another year older. I loved visiting San Diego this January for my 27th birthday with my best friend and wanted to share a travel guide for other first time visitors of “the perfect city.” I arrived in San Diego on a Saturday Morning and left Tuesday morning.
I have a habit of imagining how life would be like in every new city that I visit for the first time. For San Diego- I pictured taking my Dog Rory to the dog park, having a rosebush, and spending way too much time at Balboa Park.
Where we stayed:
We stayed at the Sofia Hotel in downtown San Diego. The location of this hotel was perfect! We were able to walk to the Gaslamp district- San Diego’s nightlife and we were only a 10-20 min drive away from all of our sightseeing spots. The only downside was that the room itself was a little smaller than we expected and because it is downtown we had to pay for Valet/Parking each night.
Where we ate:
One of my favorite things about San Diego is that there are so many great food options! There is a lot of Mexican influence with the border being only a few miles away, so there is a lot of really good Mexican food. Since it was my birthday weekend, every day we dined out- we would tell the waiter that it was my birthday and we would get a birthday dessert.
After visiting the beautiful sunset cliffs, we had dinner at the coziest restaurant, where we ate the best cake ever- several thin slices of vanilla cake nestled between fresh berries and frosting!
Cafe Gratitude was one of my favorite restaurants that we ate at, not only because the food was amazing, but their focus on gratitude filled my soul. They have a really cool concept where each item on the menu has an adjective as a name and the waiters encourage you to order by stating “I am (name of your food item).”- I ordered the pancakes by saying: “I am open-hearted.”
Communal Coffe is a coffee shop that I found on Instagram, they definetily win cutest San Diego coffee shop, just look at the cute trailer that they serve coffee from and the indoor shop is major heart eyes!
What we did:
I could spend days exploring and staring at the architecture in Balboa Park, located right next to the San Diego Zoo, it has a botanical Building, several museums, and a Japanese tea garden.
The views from La Jolla were breathtaking! I recommend walking along Coast Blvd, which is where you can see the famous and smelly sea lions/seals and walk down to the beach.
Found in La Jolla, La Valencia Hotel is a pink paradise- the entire hotel is this beautiful shade of pink and is decorated with lots of greenery and white accents.
On my first day visiting San Diego, we drove to Sunset Cliffs to watch the sunset. The pictures do not give justice to just how beautiful the scenery was. Next time, I’m planning on bringing along a blanket and a picnic while watching the sunset.
Shopping at Pigment
Pigment is one of those stores where I not only wanted to buy everything, seriously their curation of products is perfection, but I also wanted to live there- it was so well decorated and put together. Best part of all, there is a three shades of pink wall right outside the store.
San Diego quickly became one of my favorite cities to visit and I would visit San Diego again in a heartbeat. Hope you enjoyed my San Diego Travel Guide!
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