Winters in Canada are long, very long. On November 18th we had the first day with sub-zero temperatures and it seems like to comes to no end. Since 2008 we go on vacation in the winter months but this year we hadn’t planned anything because of our immigration end of September. But here comes in one of the benefits of my new job, one of our most important trade fairs took place in Southern California. And although it’s winter in California too, the temperatures over there are around 20-25 degrees Celsius above zero. Lucky me…

But how about Danielle? We decided that she would follow me and she took an Air Canada flight to Los Angeles (LAX) on the 5th of February. At LAX she got a rental car from SIXT, we got a great deal, which was a Volvo XC70 with which se drove south over the highway 1 along the pacific coast towards San Diego. She arrived only minutes after the trade fair was done and here our short Californian winter break started. After an early diner at the Cheesecake Factory and walking around in the bay area we went to our hotel the Hampton Inn since Danielle was tired from the trip and I was tired from the show. The hotel was located close to the railroad and we dubbed it Hampton Ding Ding Ding Ding since that was the sound where we woke up with on Friday morning.

After a fast breakfast we started the day with getting me singed up as a second driver on the car before we drove to Balboa park. We parked our car and wandered around ending up with a visit to the Natural History Museum with an exhibit about “The Discovery of King Tut”. This was the most beautiful part of the museum. After continuing our tour through the park we decided to visit the famous San Diego Zoo.

At the entrance we were blown away by the entrance fee, 48$ for a zoo… But since we won’t come here often we decided to go for it. And it was worth every single dollar. This is by far the most beautiful zoo we’ve ever seen. It comes close to a Disney theme park and the animals really seemed happier as in every other zoo where we have been. Also the amount of animals was huge. Needless to say we enjoyed this visit including free bus tours in the park and a the ride on the Skyfari Aerial Tram. But we wanted to see more of San Diego…

In the evening we visited Coronado Island. We went there by car and drove over the huge Coronado bridge. We parked our car near the beach, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful beaches of the United States, before we got to the famous Coronado Resort where we sat down for evening dinner until sunset came close from which I wanted to take pictures. It became cold soon when the sun went away and after a coffee we went back to the hotel.

Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding…5:30am and we woke up to leave San Diego behind today. We first drove towards the La Jolla area which is the northwestern part of San Diego and famous for its beaches which are sometimes visited by seals. And we were really lucky to spot a couple or maybe not so lucky because of the smell they bring with them…



After a short coffee break we drove further north and stopped in Oceanside where we walked a long the beach, I guess this is where we got ourselves a bit of a tan from the sun. After having lunch at Tin Fish we drove further to Anaheim where we were staying int the same hotel as where we stayed during our West Coast trip in 2012.

For dinner we went to Downtown Disney and ordered pizza…I still need to get used to sizes in inches…

Both tired from the driving and being outside we went to bed early because we had two days with sightseeing ahead of us.