San Diego

We arrived at the Hotel Del Coronado, which is on the National Registry of Historic Places, at 4:00. The hotel opened in 1888 and was built at the end of the railroad line. The hotel gained further fame when the movie "Some Like it Hot" with Marilyn Monroe was filmed there.
Upon check-in, the kids were given badges that listed three things they had to find in the hotel -- the ice cream store, the candy store (where they got a free circus candy stick), and the toy store -- and once they had collected a sticker from each of the three stores, they could redeem their stickers for a prize (they both chose plastic sunglasses) at the kids' club. We went swimming in the heated pool -- it never reached 80 degrees while we were in San Diego -- and Ken spent some time with the kids on the extensive beach. In the evening, we made S'mores on the beach (although Luke ate his ingredients individually, without roasting his marshmallow).
Day 1
Our first activity was going to the San Diego Zoo, which I thought was terrific. It seemed as though there was much less distance between you and the animals as compared to the Philadelphia Zoo. The first animal we saw was this macaw.
We saw lots of koala bears -- all sleeping, and pandas sleep 20 hours a day but we saw the cub awake and eating.
The elephant exhibit was quite extensive, and we saw the zookeeper feeding an elephant while another staffmember cleaned the bottoms of his feet. Luke came across this character, and as he did with the street performers in San Francisco, Luke ran right up to him and enthusiastically got his picture taken.
We took the sky tram, which Bryn loved, from one end of the zoo to the other. Ken wasn't so comfortable on it.
Here are a few more animals that we saw, again from a very short distance:
After lunch we headed back to the hotel where we swam as we did every afternoon. On this trip, Luke started doing something he had never done before: Jump into the pool without anyone catching him. After swimming, the kids enjoyed their first virgin pina colada.
Day 2
Ken still wasn't feeling himself after battling a stomach bug, so going to Legoland wasn't really feasible. Instead, I took Bryn to La Jolla, which is about half an hour away, and Ken took Luke to a playground on Coronado. Bryn and I went to the Children's Beach where sea lions swim just 50 feet from shore. We ate lunch on the main drag which is filled with restaurants and high-end jewelry stores. La Jolla is a very pretty town, and from all the restaurants with outdoor seating you can look out at the Pacific.
In the afternoon the kids tie-dyed t-shirts at the Kids' club. I stayed with them, but most of the children were there by themselves. As we waited for the shirts to dry a bit, the older kids played dodge ball, and I realized that I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving Bryn and Luke at a resort's "kids' club" until they're a few years older.
Day 3
We went to Balboa Park, which is a huge park in San Diego with 15 museums, including a photography museum that I would like to go to sometime. We went to the Fleet Science Museum, which was very similar to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Here, too, all of the exhibits were interactive, and some were the same as in SFO. But the San Diego museum offered a space for children 5 and under, and Bryn and Luke both enjoyed playing there.
We spent some time in the late afternoon on the extensive beach at the Del where Bryn climbed some giant rocks.
One nice thing about the Del is that it is at one end of the main drag in Coronado, so you are not beholden to the resort for your meals. We ate on the main strip most nights, and we could walk to a grocery store, too, to get milk and yogurt and fruit. The town of Coronado is charming; the only chain stores I saw were a Starbucks and a Panera. Otherwise, it's mostly restaurants. Aside from Balboa Park, we didn't spend any time in downtown San Diego. But I would definitely go back. We never made it to Legoland, and I just heard from a neighbor that the Wild Animal Park that is associated with the zoo is just terrific. As for the Hotel Del Coronado, it was nice to stay at a place that kept kids in mind. Both Bryn and Luke took advantage of the arts and crafts that were offered in the lobby on the weekends. Both kids beaded bracelets, and Bryn also made some cool flowers out of tissue paper. Luke said that San Diego was his favorite part of our two-week odyssey because he liked the candy store in the basement of the hotel. But in staying at the Del, one has to choose a room very carefully. Our first room was right above the lobby, and we had to move our second night there because we could hear every song from a wedding taking place in the ballroom right off of the lobby. We missed not having a kitchen as we did in San Francisco, but I'm afraid the Heritage Place at Ghirardelli Square will top every place that we stay from this point on.