Road trip: San Diego

Start from the beginning of our road trip.

Day 4: San Diego (0 miles!)

More sane people than us might have skipped San Diego on this trip. We were already going to Joshua Tree and Los Angeles and that could have been that. After all, 1100 miles isn't exactly shabby for a 10-day trip that includes a wedding. But as you might have gathered, we're not very good at planning leisurely vacations (see Northwest Argentina, 2011 and Patagonia, 2012) and we couldn't resist squeezing San Diego in the middle. It was one of the cities we had considered moving to instead of San Francisco and Ben had fond memories from his motorcycle trip. I had visited as a 6-year-old with the chicken pox and wanted to discover the city as an adult, without red spots all over me.

One of the many things that Ben and I agree about is that we both love the ocean, and San Diego is definitely an oceanfront town. We admired the boats in the harbor in our first night in town, after watching the Bruins beat the Blackhawks and before enjoying some delicious Italian food.

And though we both love the ocean, we sometimes slightly disagree about the best way to enjoy it. I grew up spending summers on Cape Cod and love the idea of beach days: a towel, sandwich, a good book and swimming. Ben thinks of the ocean more as a gigantic playground and was advocating for jet-skiing. Jet-skiing vs. sitting on the beach. Who would win?

We compromised and rented a sailboat. As you can see in the photo at the top of this post, we were both pretty happy with that decision.

It wasn't too windy and it was an easy boat to sail so I got to lie down and enjoy the sun while Ben skippered. (I also manned the jib when needed — it's the only sailing skill I possess.)

(We were surprised and happy about how easy it was to rent a sailboat. It's often impossible or prohibitively expensive because of liability issues. Ben was unsuccessful when he tried to rent one in San Diego in 2006 and you can read here about our difficulties in renting on Cape Cod. But our hotel referred us to Mission Bay Sportcenter, which charged us $24/hour to rent a 14-foot monohulled boat for as long as we wanted. We were happy campers ... err sailors.)

We sailed around the enclosed Mission Bay before turning in our boat and heading across the road to Pacific Beach. We enjoyed a brief beach "day" and then hopped on the bus/trolley back downtown (I still wish American cities would improve their public transit).

We wandered around San Diego for the evening, with happy hour sangrias and Mexican for dinner in the Gaslamp Quarter. It was a nice change of pace to leave the bike behind for a day and do some urban touring.

- Steph

Next up: Motorcycling through the desert