San Diego (Insert Anchorman Joke Here)

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So even though we had so so much fun camping in San Francisco, we decided to take a little break from the outdoors to spend some time watching TV. It sounds lame, but after our campsite was midnight attacked by a gang of kittens, we needed some shelter from scary wildlife. LA was a great break because we have friends who live there, but San Diego (it’s a fact- it’s the greatest city in the world) was a dream come true.

My cousin, Cat, from my dad’s side, has a timeshare through a hotel chain and she hooked us up with a 2 bedroom suite in San Diego. Not only were there 3 TVs, but it had a whole kitchen (it even came with spices- including cinnamon. Yay!). Listen, having a TV and a kitchen is absolutely magical after living out of a car and trying to watch episodes of Glee on my laptop.

Our first day of San Diego, before we checked into our suite for a few days, we headed to the zoo. We just had to, eh. Actually, on our way to the zoo, we stopped for some tacos at a drive through taco stand. Since then, we’ve seen many of these establishments, but Roberto’s Tacos was the first, and the tacos were outstanding. It cost something like $8 for all of us to eat, and my 80^th fish taco of the trip was pretty much delicious. Minus the fact that the coleslaw from inside the taco spilled all over the steering wheel, seat, and my clothing, which is the price I paid for eating tacos while driving. Totes worth it.

I must say, the zoo… is enormous and expensive. Though we did see a real live puma and the cutest panda in the world, the zoo was just big more than anything else. Many of the animals were quite mesmerizing to watch, and I learned a ton about different types of wildcats and elephants. A puma can actually leap 30 feet and land upon its prey. If he wasn’t so sleepy in his cage (so freaking adorable), I would’ve liked to have seen that. All I wanted was to snuggle up with a variety of giant cat, because they nap just like Butter Michelle, but I doubt if they would have liked me in their cages.

One of the funniest things we saw was Hot Mess Monkey. One of the monkey cages had three monkeys, each of whom represented a member of the gang. There was a wise, quiet, monkey who seemed to be overseeing the others (Abigail). Then we saw young, playful monkey, who was just jumping and leaping from tree to tree (Rob). Finally, we saw Hot Mess Monkey. He was a little guy passed out on the ground, entangled in rope, sleeping inside a burlap sack (Ali). If only he had a stain on his shirt or was sticky in some regard… then he would have truly represented my hot mess of a self.

We walked around for four hours, all of us super thirsty because drinks were $5.19 and none of us were willing to pay up, and we still didn’t see everything. We ended the day with a gondola ride looking over the park that landed us at the reptile house. Sadly, the insect house was closed for the day, but the snakes and alligators were super awesome. I engaged in quite a long staring contest with a mini gator through the glass, which I clearly won. But I’d say, if that glass wasn’t there, he would’ve won in an actual battle.

With our feet killing us and our mouths thirsty as hell, we left the zoo at closing time and headed toward our hotel. Side note, in our state of unrest because the tacos left us parched, we decided to stop on the way to the hotel to pick up some dranks. What actually happened, though, is that we saw a convenient store and Abigail, excited to have some water that didn’t cost the same price as three meals at Roberto’s Tacos, swiftly turned into the parking lot, driving over the curb and a grassy knoll, just to get us a good spot. It’s possible that we went airborne at some point, but I guess we’ll never know because we were giggling so hard when we finally hit the pavement. We were quite delirious after being in the sun all day; I was just excited when we were safely out of the car and I had some strawberry milk in my belly.

Next stop: the hotel. Cat totally and completely hooked us up, yo. We got into the room, which was perfect for making spaghetti and meatballs (yes! Cooking! Woo!) and watching like 89383 movies and/or episodes of Criminal Minds. So I had to sleep with the light on, it was totally worth being able to veg in front of the scary TV all night. Plus, we hit up a Trader Joe’s, and stocked up on bottles of wine (one of which we stuck in the freezer to chill and forgot about, thus ending up with an exploded bottle and wine slushy).

The next 2 days consisted of the following: cooking, laundry, movies, TV, movies, Abigail sleeping for 17 hours in a row (she accidentally went to sleep at 5PM and didn’t wake up until the next morning- that king size bed was just asking for it), eating dinner with Cat (delicious hamburgers), having Dandy over for a sleepover, more movies, wine, eating leftovers, baking, giggling, yogging, chillin by the pool (they had a pool! Rob could’ve have been happier), and probably more giggling at some point. With Dandy around, it’s just a recipe for laughter. We also got to meet Dandy’s family and best friend- a dream freaking come true.

When it was finally time to check out of our compound, we drove over to Old Town to get some eats. Old Town was adorable, and miraculously, I ate the second best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. Let’s be real, nothing will top the Bacon Doughnut (yes, I do capitalize because it is that important). It was so simple: a flour tortilla. Sounds dumb? IT WASN’T. I’m actually upset at myself because I ordered some soup, which came with a basket of homemade, hot, soft, fresh, perfect flour tortillas, and I didn’t even dig in to them until the end of the meal because I was busy with my fish taco (shocking). The tacos came with corn tortillas, which were also magnificent. But Abigail suggested that I try the flour tortillas, because when she lived in Honduras, she used to eat them and insisted they were worth a try. She was right. As usual.

I ate probably the entire basket, even though my belly was already full of fish taco and delicious chicken soup. But these tortillas were unreal. They were just warm and soft and of perfect consistency. In a way, I’m a little upset at how good they were because now tortillas I buy at the store are just crap. On the way out of the restaurant, I was mesmerized by the women making the tortillas on a big flat top stove at the front of the joint. It was so simple looking; they just took the dough, made a quick ball with their hands, and then gave the dough one roll under a rolling pin before throwing it over the heat. I must have stood there for about 10 minutes.

After the amazing tortilla experience, which filled me up such that I didn’t eat dinner that night (except popcorn), we just took a little stroll around the town, where we all bought some candies and Rob bought a cigar. So classy.

With full bellies, we drove down to Coronado to check out the Hotel Del Coronado. The hotel was just magnificent, and again, Rob was in heaven. He’s pretty much in love with the era of Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, so it was pretty rockin’ walking through the same places those guys once hung out. Plus, the views of the ocean were absolutely gorgeous. I could see why the hype was there.

That night, we stayed with Cat, who lives a little outside of the city. It was a very chill night, where we just munched on popcorn and watched Edward Scissor Hands. Ding Dong, the Avon Lady. In the morning, Cat made us breakfast, and then we headed to Starbucks to pick up Dandy before driving to Vegas. We had to wait for a bit at the SB for Dandy to get off work, but it was quite amusing seeing him in action in his green apron.

Once Dandy’s shift was over, we stocked up on groceries for the week, and smushed in the car (like… really smushed) for our journey to Las Vegas.

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