Three Little Birds: A Trip to San Diego

I recently met my friend Steve, who lives near Los Angeles, in San Diego for a weekend getaway. I had never been to California before, so I was pretty damn excited about this trip.

On Friday, we explored the Gaslamp Quarter. We had lunch at a little Thai place, walked a few blocks and got some gelato, walked a few more blocks and got a glass of wine. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time checking everything out.

Then we drove to the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club for a day at the races. I was so happy that Steve came up with this idea, because we had a blast. He tried to teach me how to read the statistics in order to pick a horse, but I stuck with my tried and true method...go by the name. It turned out to be just as good a method as his, because neither one of us won anything. It was kind of pathetic, but we still had fun.

On the weekends, after the last race of the day, Del Mar has a free concert series, and the band the night we were there was The B-52s, who I LOVE.

On Saturday, we checked out the San Diego Museum of Art and their special Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit.

After the museum, we walked around beautiful Balboa Park for a while.

Then, we went back to the hotel for some pool time before we had to get ready for our dinner reservation. Seriously, life cannot get any better than when you are poolside in the California sunshine, with a fruity drink in your hand and a hot boy by your side. I was in heaven! This is probably my favorite picture from the whole trip...taken with my Blackberry in the bathroom mirror as we got ready for dinner.

Speaking of dinner, one thing that we were really good at on this trip was picking restaurants. Every dinner that we had was over-the-top fantastic. On Thursday, it was Harney Sushi, which was Steve's pick. I'm usually a purist when it comes to sushi, but I have to say, this place was great and the Captain Mitch roll blew me away. Friday was Sevilla, which we randomly picked while wondering through the Gaslamp, starving at 11:00 pm after a long day; it turned out to be one of the best meals I've ever had. Saturday was my pick, and I chose Bencotto for Italian. Good Lord, it was fantastic! If you're ever in San Diego, I would highly recommend any of these restaurants.

After brunch on Sunday, we did a tour of Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, before I had to get to the airport. This park has only been open for 6 years, and it's beautiful!