Old Town San Diego and Double Peak park

After visiting the Leo Carrillo Ranch, we moved on to Double Peak park. This was a beaufiful park with some play area for kids and a trail path for everyone in Carlsbad/San Marcos area. 

Reminded us of Hunters point in Cupertino. The views were awesome and the kids had fun with a triple fulcrum see-saw! It was interesting and we have never seen a see-saw like this where 4 or 5 kids can walk up and down. 

Then we took a short break and drove to Old Town for New Year's eve dinner, at El Coyote! Most of the shops were closed but we got to watch the window displays in this area.. some of them were quite interesting!

Then we watched ladies make tortillas at Guiness book record speeds. 

The dinner itself was quite interesing with a couple of guys with guitars singing for the ladies! My three girls were either not amused or were embarrassed by the attention. 

El Coyote has a separate "vegetarian menu" and they give it if you ask for it. It was good that our friends knew that and made ordering a breeze. 

It was a memorable evening and we all slept well. On first we had the last stop on the trip. The San Diego Zoo! 

First time visit for everyone in the family and there are still hundreds of photos from that day that have yet to be edited. Will take a break and post them next week. By far the best Zoo we have seen..

Ventura beach and Harbor Village

Stop four on our road trip was the Ventura beach and Harbor Village. The beach was very cold and given I like heat more than cold, we decided to walk along the beach facing the sun to see if that would help. 

It did to a limited extent.. Hope that my Vitamin D blood test due next week will pass with flying colors after all the sun we got last week.

The waves were tall and rough and there were not that many people around at noon.

we saw these baby Plowers on the beach.. they were moving so fast and well camouflaged in the sands and shadows.. it took me a lot of clicks to get this little guy. 

Then from nowhere this eagle comes down and takes some of these birds! Amazing how nature works!

 The kids had fun running around and climbing the little dunes. 

Then we went to the Channel Island visitor center. We have always wanted to go to Channel Islands park, but they require a lot of planning as the boat tours get booked months in advance. This time we stayed within walking distance of the starting point, but again, same result. No tours available. 

The visitor center is much hyped in the Ventura city website, but it did not live up to that hype. Compared to other visitor centers we have seen in National parks, this one is "okay". 

We proceeded to go to the Harbor Village. This was the real deal! Had lunch at a nice Italian place called Milano's. The food was great! After lunch we walked around the Harbor and took pictures.. the kids went on a paddle boat ride for an hour and that gave us a nice break for a high tea!

This family portrait was taken outside Milano's. 

They had the entire walkway nicely decorated with these lamps. We watched two guys patiently change the decoration for each lamp from Christmas greeting to New Year greeting. 

The paddle boat ride was starting to be a disaster. We watched another family struggle to even get out of the narrow path. The kids somehow managed to navigate through, and once they were out, they had a great time. 

They were very tired after the one hour paddling in the sun. 

 We stopped by for some last minute pictures in front of the murals on the way out. 

and it was time to say bye to Ventura and head towards Anaheim, as we had a date with Mickey the next morning! 

All of us loved the Harbor Village. It is a quieter less cluttered version of Sausalito and the people were sooo nice! Maybe it was the holiday spirit. Maybe the people in the Ventura harbor village are nice by default. Either way, we loved it!

They say it is 5 PM somewhere, for me it is 9 AM somewhere! So the blog takes a break! 

We pick up at stop 5.. later!

Welcoming 2016

On a last minute whim, we decided to go on a road trip down south to the Los Angeles and San Diego area. We started off with a stop at Ventura, visited the Bonaventura mission, beaches  and then went down to San Marcos..

Had a wonderful dinner with friends in Old Town, San Diego, a place we are visiting after almost 10 years! 

We started 2016 with a visit to the San Diego zoo! The smiling faces of the friends, kids and our first ever sighting of live pandas made our day!

Here's to 2016! May this year bring you the best of health and wealth!