San Diego!

The last time I visited San Diego was the week of New Years Eve (for a cheerleading trip) when '99 turned 2000 and people thought the Internet and all computers would self destruct. This time I went for an American Dietetics Association meeting with a Registered Dietitian cohort, my sis Andrea. We got all our classes done (and even listened to several) but we had way too much fun in between.

On our first free afternoon we made it down to Mission Beach and rented bikes. We rode them up and down the coast. We also briefly saw Sunset Cliffs, gorgeous!






...the posting above gave us a little Lol on our ride...

And has anyone else ever dreamed of sitting in one of these tractor digging devices? One more thing off my bucket list.




The Expo was incredible. And by incredible, I mean we were incredibly FULL from all the food being handed to us. It's a well known fact among specialty/health food distributors that the way to the population (& higher profits) is through medical professionals who talk about food all day. ==> RDs. We couldn't walk 10 feet without someone shoving some kind of food into our hands (not that we were complaining). Over the course of one day, for example, we tasted; almond milk, rice milk, regular milk, soy milk, hemp milk, coconut milk... the list goes on.
This robot told me he liked my boots, we were pals for a little bit.




We originally planned on staying in a hotel near the convention center, but those were insanely expensive. So we settled for the next closest option, which was about 2 miles away. We quickly discovered though, that the place we settled for was right in the heart of gorgeous Little Italy, and absolutely the best choice!












Above is our view from the roof deck of our hotel. We spent a LOT of our down time relaxing up there. We also found a red tub (random? we thought so too!) on the roof. It was light enough for two women to drag around so we ended up taking a bunch of pictures sitting in it. That tub entertained us for a full hour one evening.









You all know I love good food. When I go to a new city I always look up places featured on Food Network. We ate burgers at Hodad's, a surfer dig (Diners, Drive-ins & Dives) with punk rock blaring while we munched our gut bombs.





We also tried Cafe 222, directly across from the Convention Center. This one I got from "Best Thing I EVER Ate", a recommendation from Bobby Flay. Let me just tell you about this french toast. First of all it is banana bread. Two pieces stuffed with peanut butter, carmalized bananas and honey. Then prepared the traditional way, the top loaded with maple syrup and a heaping scoop of butter (which I should have just spread directly onto my thighs and skipped a step).



Very rich and delicious, but later in the day we decided that since we WERE at a DIETITIAN conference *wince*, we should do the right thing and exercise.

We saw these steps on the side of the Conv center and gave them a try. I thought I was somewhat in shape, but after a few days of these babies we were so sore we looked like giraffes trying to walk down a hill.






My wonderful hubs recently turned 32 (Happy Birthday Paul!) and I have to give him husband of the year award for letting me go on such a fun, educational, delicious trip.