’21 Mar: Vaccination VayCay

Windy and I left LA around 10am heading south. First stop, Oceanside, to visit Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, founded in 1798 and 18th of the 21 California missions.

According to the woman in the gift shop, the painting on the walls inside the church are meant to be the original design.

Next stop, Old Town Temecula for a little stroll and a lot of lunch. Thanks to google for the pictures. We weren’t there for the only-cool-cars car parade.

We went on to our overnight destination, South Coast Winery, Resort, and Spa. We walked around, tasted some wine, ate More Food, and then took an early night in our especially lovely room – fancy fireplace, comfy lounge chairs, dining table and comfy chairs, patio table and comfy chairs, and a Jacuzzi tub!

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The view around the corner from our patio, the fake fireplace that we really enjoyed, and a flower.

We spent the morning hanging around the Winery, enjoying a just-right room service breakfast, and packing up for the next leg of our journey.

We got to San Diego about noon and it took us until after 1 to get checked into our hotel because the room I booked based on the picture on their website (Marriott Courtyard in Old Town San Diego) as it turns out, does not actually exist. They took the best features of several different rooms to create the look. The desk clerk of course was entirely innocent and also very new. She called upon the head of housekeeping to describe all the rooms in the category I booked and gave us four sets of keys to see which room we preferred. How there could be so many different configurations is remarkable in a Marriott Courtyard. In the end we got happy enough and they gave us a bottle of surprisingly good wine as a thank you.

Finally we could leave for lunch. We stopped at the first restaurant along the way, Cafe Coyote. The food was delicious and the venue was fun.

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We headed out to have a stroll through Old Town but about a block after the restaurant Windy got lured into a spa dermatology treatment place. Did she buy anything? Oh yes she did.

I took a few pictures around Old Town but it was getting late and cold so we went back to the hotel because we like to hang out in hotels.

We had lunch and drove through the Gaslamp area that seemed to have taken a terrible hit economically, and then came the long awaited rain. We drove through Balboa Park and very much look forward to visiting again.

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And the Sea Lions. How did they get up there?!