The Walters Go West Part 4: Laguna Beach and San Diego

After an amazing and fun two days at Disneyland and Disneyland California Adventure, we drove about a half hour to stay the night in Laguna Beach, California.  When we awoke the next morning, we headed out to the beach to enjoy all the amazing beauty there.  I can now say that Laguna Beach is my favorite beach!  We enjoyed it for so many reasons.

The sand was soft and light (almost white).  There were hills all around and the beach runs right beside Crystal Cove State Park, which also looked amazing (but we didn't have time to visit this trip).  There was so much to explore there.  When we first arrived, the kids enjoyed just running along the beach and letting the waves follow them.

It wasn't long after we arrived that we spotted the fun cliffs and rocks to climb.  We love the varied terrain that the beach offers.

We enjoyed looking for shells.  Abbey found a beautiful purple one.

We grabbed lunch at a nearby taco shop and brought it to another area of the beach to have a picnic.  We sat near the Montage resort on Treasure Island beach to enjoy our lunch:

Isn't it gorgeous?

Look at this lovely picnic lunch spot!

Treasure Island beach is perfect!  After eating lunch and exploring a bit, the kids were ready to build sand castles.

I love that there is so much to explore at Laguna Beach besides just the normal water and sand.  There were so many rocks to climb, rock tunnels to go through, tide pools to explore and more.

We thoroughly enjoyed Laguna Beach, but it was time to drive about an hour to San Diego.  We were excited to explore that great city!  When we arrived late in the afternoon we explored Old Town San Diego.  We had fun walking through the fun old shops and the area.  We grabbed some dinner at Liberty Public Market (such a great place for foodies and families and so many options) and headed to Belmont Park and mission beach to explore and enjoy the sunset.

We were a bit overwhelmed at the amount of things to do in San Diego for families and had such a difficult time figuring out what to do with our limited time there.  We were only there for about a day (the afternoon of one day and the morning of the next.)  The next morning we ate breakfast and then visited Seaport Village, walking along Harbor Dr.  We checked out the USS Midway, which was enormous and really neat to see in person.

After our beautiful early morning walk, we drove through Balboa Park and then headed to Little Italy to grab lunch.  Unfortunately the pizza place we wanted to eat at which was highly rated had trouble with its credit card system and they couldn't sell anything.  So we walked up the street to Burger Lounge and enjoyed some delicious grass-fed burgers.  I wish this place would open a restaurant in Austin--it was so good! 

After lunch we had to drive to the airport in San Diego to fly back home.

When we initially planned this trip we were concerned it might have been a bit too much traveling from city to city.  But, this trip was truly amazing.  We got to see so many different places on our bucket list.   We are really looking forward to going back to the San Diego area someday and explore more since there is so much to do, but we had such little time.