San Diego, CA Vaca - Day 7: Birch Aquarium in La Jolla and Gaslamp Quarter

So breakfast was PACKED this morning! Apparently a ton of people arrived here over the weekend and were all standing in the waffle line this morning when we got there! So no waffles for little man this morning, but considering he has had like 3 this week, I think he is ok! He has been very concerned with our coffee this week, he always likes getting a taste from me, so this morning we got him his own (empty) coffee cup and he loved it. Little barista in the making!

On today's agenda was to go up to La Jolla (sounds like La Hoya) and visit the Birch Aquarium. It was about 20 minutes from our hotel. The aquarium had a lot of mixed reviews online again, just because it is a smaller aquarium. We enjoyed our time there though, spent about an hour and a half, which was perfect for the attention span of an almost two year old. I found some coupons online and saved us $6, whoo hoo!!

They had a lot of different sized tanks full of "fishies" to look at, and I loved how they had a step up for little people. Jackson LOVED the fish tanks here, he was so excited to look at everything.

My favorite exhibits here were of the sea horses. They had such a variety!

Serious contemplation going on here!

"Fishies!!!!"

I thought this gal was so cute! Loved the colors!

Part of the sea horse nursery

So interesting!

Outside on the terrace overlooking the ocean, they had some tidal pools set up to replicate kind of what we saw at Point Loma earlier this week. Jackson liked looking in the water and touching the water. What cracked me up though was how much he loved the fake rock sculpture and the plastic starfish and shells... I'm like of course haha...

He kept sliding them down the side, it's a miracle we got him away from this thing without him kicking and screaming haha! He totally would be ok taking this huge thing home with us!

Views from the terrace

There's a reason why the stroller exit is through the giftshop... because you end up buying a $4 plastic starfish and a $2 "fishie ring." Jacob was so proud that he picked the pink one haha he had a death grip on that thing, there was no changing colors! And he's sleeping with it tonight of course. ;0)

 We left the aquarium and made our way down into La Jolla to find a place to eat lunch. This little city is hoppin'! It was so congested, even on a Monday! The traffic kept moving, but we were a little surprised at just how many cars there were. We finally found a parking place and walked over to George's Outdoor Terrace for lunch.

City pics

We passed "LaRue's" restaurant! It was tempting to go eat there!

So the kids meal came with ice cream... I know, this kid has had so much sugar this week! He loves ice cream so much, and when the rest of it melted, he drank it with a straw haha...

View from the terrace

We were going to go down to the La Jolla cove to get some pictures of all of the sea lions that gather there, but traffic ate into our time so we just decided to head out for Jackson to get a nap. Traffic coming into La Jolla and leaving was pretty congested. We got back to the hotel and got little man to sleep. And he slept... and slept... for two and a half hours! I think I have thoroughly worn my kid out because very rarely does he take two hour plus naps two days in a row! Wat?! So by the time he woke up, it was too late to go to the Railroad museum in Balboa Park, which I had wanted to do earlier this week, so we headed over to Gaslamp Quarter to get some dinner. This is just another part of town that has tons of places to eat and cute little shops to walk in and out of.

When we got to the car, we realized we had a little visitor hehe!

We went to a restaurant called Wereworlf for dinner and it was so good! Sometimes the staff dresses up like super heroes, but they weren't tonight. The food was great though, ended up being one of our favorite meals.

So you know your toddler is done traveling and parents are done with trying to reign him in when you let him tear through a whole pack of gum while waiting on dinner haha... The staff was so nice here, they thought he was great and said he could run around wherever he wanted just not out the door haha. 

Little hand helping mommy out with her carbs! Definitely lost some bread here haha!

Of course Jacob had to do a werewolf call a couple of times while we were here... ;-)

Pictures of Gaslamp Quarter

So I really don't know how we keep ending up at places like this... maybe because they are EVERYWHERE! I have to say, I have done pretty well this week with my prego pancreas blood sugars, especially considering we have eaten out for every meal for a solid week... but these cupcakes did me in tonight! So sad! Even splitting with my sugar baby didn't help! But thankfully it was as bad as Chinese Food weekend when I was trying to figure out if I had gestational diabetes, but it was one of my higher meals. So tomorrow... back to life, back to reality... no more sweets for this mama!

This is his, "NO mom, I don't care if you want to take a picture, I was to eat this NOW!!!" face.

So that concludes our trip to San Diego!!! Tomorrow morning we fly back to Houston and hope and pray our child can get back to his normal schedule as soon as possible! We have loved our time here, there is so much to see and do and EAT. It is a super friendly town and so easy to navigate, with absolutely perfect weather. I really can't say enough good things about this city. It will be fun to come back again when the boys are older and can do more. I feel like we had a good sampling of everything, but there was so much more that we could have done. I'm so glad that we took this trip before becoming a family of four, we made so many fun memories with each other and action Jackson that I will always remember!