Fun things to do in San Diego

San Diego is SUCH a beautiful city with so much to do ...if it weren't so darn expensive I'd love to live there.

Heck! It may still happen someday, who knows?

I traveled with my mom and stepdad to visit some of his family (daughter, son-in-law and grandkids) that live there. The trip had a little bit of a rocky start though.

Backstory: My best friend is a flight attendant, so I was flying on standby for the flight there. For those of you who aren't familiar, it's basically when you get a free/cheap ticket from someone who works with one of the airlines. But you aren't assigned seats until after every other paying passenger has been assigned their seats. If the plane is full ...well you're out of luck and you have to wait for another plane.

That's what happened on this trip. I almost cried ...it had been a while since I had flown by myself and my anxiety still wasn't fully under control. I was NOT prepared for this!!

Just to throw some icing on this cupcake ...I got called for the middle seat. But I actually ended up sitting in the middle of two really cool people. We talked about life and traveling the entire flight.

In the end we all made it safely (and sanely) to beautiful San Diego.

We were only there for a few days and the places that we visited have so many options within them so we were able to pack our days full of so much fun.

Here's some of the cool things that we found in San Diego.

I'm all about saving on trips where you can, so if you're planning on heading out to explore San Diego, I'd really recommend using the Go San Diego Card. It'll give free admission to a lot of these places that I'll mention.

I've started using the cards for most of the places that I visit and they're so great!

1. Beach/Ocean

To most people, this may seem like a big DUHHH!

But in Oregon ...it's rare that we get the chance to swim in the ocean AND if we do generally we have to wait until our feet go numb before we dive in.

The first thing that my mom did when we got into San Diego was drive down to this little beach area across from where we were staying.

She said "put your feet in the water".

I had soooo much apprehension about walking in. But I stood there, held my breath and let those light San Diego waves wash over my feet.

Any Oregonian who has been to the ocean would know what I'm talking about. But this was like bath water.

And that's when it hit me ...we're not in Oregon anymore!!

2. Balboa Park

All around Balboa Park is super awesome but it's also pretty large and has so much to offer

...just make sure to wear comfy shoes if you plan on exploring a bit.

Since there's so much to Balboa Park, I'll break it down in the next categories and here's a link to a multi-day park pass if you're into saving some money.