My friend Feargal flew into LA from Dublin with his son on December 26th. We had a nice dinner at a steak house in LA as they fought the jet lag of their first night in town. Killian loves ribs. He ate an entire rack several times throughout the trip. He also developed a fondness for poking me constantly while we waited in lines for roller-coaster rides at the various amusement parks which I wasn't quite as fond of.
Second day we drove down to San Diego from Brentwood and had an overnight adventure at The San Diego Wild Animal Park. It's called the Roar & Snore, was during the Festival of Lights and I highly recommend this experience once... just not in the middle of winter when the temperature is below freezing unless you bring your own mini-heaters for the tents. The way the experience works is you are private guests of the Park. You are assigned tents just outside the areas where most of the animals roam. The package includes dinner, breakfast, two days at the park and two/three private tours with the animals. The night tour takes place late at night after the public has left the park. There is a campfire with singing and they opened up the sledding just for us which the kids loved even though it was freezing cold outside. I would also recommend bringing an extra set of clothes if you plan on participating in this little bit of fun because everyone who sledded was soaked. There were a lot of laughs and the Christmas lights in the shapes of animals adds a bit of nostalgia to the experience. They wake up the campers early for 1-2 early morning walking tours as well as a bus tour before the park re-opens to the public and you can for an additional cost have private feeding sessions with the animals as well. It was a great experience overall and enjoyed by all of us.
We spent the rest of our evening after the Wild Animal Park touring old town San Diego's Mexican restaurants with Margaritas and mariachi bands, got a great discount at the "W" hotel via travelzoo and there was ice skating downtown across from our hotel. There was also a basketball contest going on while we were there so the jacuzzi was not quite accessible unless you wanted to pile in with 20 college-age girls but they were all nice and we did night swimming in the heated outdoor pool and warmed up in the jacuzzi afterwards.
The next day we awoke and headed to Sea World for my favorite part of the trip... swimming with dolphins. We actually got to spend about an hour in the water with them, playing, giving training commands and they do take pictures of the experience for you to keep. It was the best experience of my trip and I now want to do this on every beachy vacation I take because I loved it so much. Our dolphin, Maggie, was so soft that when I touched her it felt like touching velvet and dolphins are such docile creatures that I couldn't help but smile from ear-to-ear throughout the entire experience. They do provide hot showers afterwards before you head back into the rest of the park which is an added bonus. We spent the rest of time enjoying the various Sea exhibits and shows until the park closed. We stopped in Pacific Beach for a late night dinner on the strip and then drove back to Los Angeles that night.
The next stage of our trip was dedicated to amusement parks throughout the Los Angeles area. We toured Universal Studios, Disneyland, California Adventures, and got our admission tickets for both Sea World and The Wild Animal Park on a group pass that we purchased through the Universal Studios website. This is a great package deal because it includes 2 days at Universal and 3 days at the Disney parks for a cheaper rate. We also separately purchased discounted tickets via AAA for Magic Mountain. I purchased the annual pass at the full rate which means I can visit for the entire year free. Only thing I would have done differently was add a parking pass for Magic Mountain as it's approximately $20 per trip to park.
Highlights and favorites included the incredible fireworks shows including DJ's and a midnight countdown at Disneyland on New Year's Eve night. I also loved seeing the updates and changes to Universal as working as Guest Relations at Universal was actually my first job in high school when I was 16 and they were still in the process of building Citiwalk at that point... I really enjoyed seeing all the additions and growth to the park since I had last been there. I also loved going on Tatsu at Magic Mountain... best roller coaster I've ever been on and I laughed so hard that I cried at the way Feargal screamed in a Dublin accent the entire time we first went on the ride. We liked it so much we went on three times in a row, but nothing beat the first time. I liked that California Adventures offered wine tasting as well for when we wanted to relax after being on our feet for two weeks straight.
We also spent a day shopping around LA including The Beverly Center, 3rd Street Promenade and visiting Paradise Cove for lunch at the beach. Killian ordered full-racks of ribs everywhere he could find them which was amusing to me since I think the meat in Ireland is fantastic and this was his "American" food of choice... that and hot chocolate. I made hot chocolate for him on his first morning in LA and I think he had 1-3 cups every day after that. :)
We headed to San Francisco for the final two days of the adventure because Aer Lingus cancelled their Los Angeles/Dublin direct flight 2 months prior due to massive budget cuts, which was a complete cluster experience to say the least but I really enjoyed my first "real" trip to San Fran. We had booked flights for around 10am and we got to the airport about an hour 1/2 early for a what should have been an easy local flight. Easy except for we flew out of LAX instead of Dublin and it was still only a few days after New Year's so LAX was still extremely congested. We got to the gate and saw that our flight was delayed. We asked how long the delay would be and decided to grab breakfast pre-flight. We came back about 30 minutes later and they had not only "cancelled the delay" but they had closed the flight leaving several of us passengers stranded in LA until the next flights could be arranged. This may not have been a big deal but we had pre-booked tickets to Alcatraz that afternoon and the only flight we could get out in time flew into Oakland instead of SFO.
We made a split-decision to go for it and not lose the days planned activities. So we raced to another terminal, caught the flight to Oakland and cabbed it into the city just in time for Alactraz. Alcatraz is an amazing experience and I recommend every one go once. To see a real jail that housed some of the most dangerous criminals in history is so incredibly intriguing to me. One of the prisoners, who is now in his 70's, was there autographing the book he wrote so of course I had to buy it... and I also bought a book on Al Capone, hoping to find some family history in there... long story saved for another post... but I did purchase that as well. I got some great pics of the cells and the view into San Francisco and we did the tour. It was cool.
And then came the yucky part. Trying to get our luggage was a complete nightmare. Southwest Airlines would not deliver our luggage to our hotel so we spent 4 hours on the train back and forth picking up our luggage from SFO airport and made it back to the hotel in time for dinner at a beautiful Italian restaurant (the name I cannot remember, but it was near a mall and across from a few shoe stores). Unfortunately by the time we finished dinner, the shops were closed so we headed back to the hotel and had drinks in the hotel bar where we met 2 lovely girls and their father travelling from Brazil.
The next morning we had just enough time for me to grab a quick breakfast with one of my friends from LA living in Oakland and back to the airport we went, where we parted ways as I flew back to Los Angeles and Feargal and Killian flew back to Dublin.
All in all it was an amazing whirlwind view of California... an enjoyable and pleasant experience and I'm still in awe of all the things we were able to do and see in such a short period of time.
