My husband and I took our daughter on a week-long vacation to San Diego just before she turned 2 years old. We like to have some kind of getaway planned during the colder months of Idaho to have something to look forward to when winters start to drag on! We’ve gone to Mexico & Arizona the past couple of years, but this year I wanted to pick a destination that would be especially active for our toddler. I’m sharing our entire itinerary below, along with our vacation recap.

I also shared a recap & review of everything we did in this YouTube video:

Another preference of mine was that our destination had a direct flight from the Boise airport. As you might know, that takes down our options to just a handful of choices 😁

San Diego has direct flights from Boise, reasonably warm weather (compared to Idaho) in winter, and tons for us to do as a family so I booked us a vacation for February 2024! After comparing prices between hotels and AirBnBs, it made more sense to rent a townhome and give us a separate bedroom for Brynnley and a full kitchen. I found a cute little rental townhome right on the beach in Mission Bay. The proximity to the ocean meant sacrificing size so it was a little cramped in the townhome.

We purchased CityPass tickets online before arriving in San Diego. A CityPass gets you into your choice of the San Diego Zoo or San Diego Safari Park plus Sea World and two other attractions. We picked the Zoo, Sea World, the Birch Aquarium, and the USS Midway Museum. You could have used them for a harbor boat tour, a hop-on/hop-off trolley pass, and a couple other museums. Price-wise, it was a huge savings to purchase the CityPass versus paying the entry fee at each location and we had no issues with anyone accepting it. They simply scanned the QR code at the entry of each attraction and that was that. We did not have to pay for a pass or admission anywhere for Brynnley since most places are free for anyone 2 and under.

San Diego had some pretty gnarly storms up until the day we arrived, even flooding some of the coastal streets. We were lucky that this didn’t impact our trip and we were still able to enjoy mostly amazing weather! We only had one rainy day, so we scheduled the Birch Aquarium for that day since it was our only indoor attraction.

DAY ONE:

Technically our first day was our travel and arrival day. We picked up our rental car, checked into our AirBnB, explored the area around us, stocked up on groceries for the week, unpacked and cooked dinner at home. So I’ll consider “Day One” the first full day we actually woke up in San Diego and had some fun things on the itinerary!

• Drive through La Jolla and find a cute local coffee shop. We picked BETTER BUZZ Coffee.
• Birch Aquarium at Scripps using the CityPass. We arrived right when they opened. They have a penguin feeding at 10:30am that we watched, and we were able to tour the entire aquarium and play in the touch pools by noon.
• Check out Children’s Pool in La Jolla – this is a specific stretch of beach that had a wall built to minimize waves and make it safer for young children. However it ended up attracting seals, and we were there during “pupping” season! To protect the seals, the actual beach is closed to humans, but you can watch the seals and enjoy the views from a look-out just above them.
• Back to our townhome in Mission Beach for Brynnley’s nap time. While she slept, we both took turns walking down the boardwalk and checking out Belmont Park, which is full of shops and restaurants plus a roller coaster, rides and arcade games.

• Explore Old Town San Diego – we loved this area! So many cool historical-looking buildings and fun museums. Lots of places that look like western saloons. Tons of shops and restaurants, mostly Mexican food. Beautiful landscaping and very vibrant decor. Plenty of room for Brynnley to run around.
• Dinner at Casa De Reyes. This is an outdoor Mexican restaurant with umbrellas and heating lamps throughout. There was a stage and seating for live music, which Brynnley danced her little heart out to. We really enjoyed our entrees and drinks here!

DAY TWO:

• Our daughter woke up at 7am, but Sea World doesn’t open until 10am so we killed some time with breakfast. We walked to Blue Palm Coffee Shop, which was my favorite coffee shop and cafe of the trip.

• Sea World: We arrived right when they opened and used our CityPass. Parking is not free, and is not included in the CityPass. It was $30. Their website also says they do not allow you to bring in food or water. However we brought Brynnley’s snacks in her diaper bag and no one checked or said anything through the little “security” station. We also brought our own stroller.
• We planned our Sea World exploration around the showtimes. There are 3 shows – dolphin show, orca show, and sea lion show – with different times for each throughout the day. We saw the dolphin show at 11am, which was only about 15-20 minutes. We made the orca show at noon, which was a little longer and the best show of the day. We picked the 4pm showing of the sea lion show.
• Our daughter is stubborn when it comes to sleep and NEEDS to nap, but won’t let herself sleep in her stroller. She really naps best in her comfortable crib, so to make sure we all had a great day on the vacation we left Sea World around 12:30 to allow Brynnley to nap in her crib at our townhome. Luckily you can re-enter the park as long as you get a handstamp, and we did not have to repay for parking. We just showed the parking attendant our receipt from that morning when we returned after nap.
• We arrived back at Sea World refreshed after Brynnley’s nap around 3:30pm and toured everything left that we hadn’t seen yet.
• Sea World is VERY toddler friendly and Brynnley had a blast! The shark exhibit is really cool and the sea turtles are massive. There was plenty to see and do to fill our day here and keep Brynnley engaged and entertained all day long!

DAY THREE:

• It’s now just our vacation theme to start off each day with a different cute local coffee shop! I found Communal Coffee and I loved it! I wish we had one in Boise!

• Communal Coffee was right next to Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo. We used our CityPass to enter the Zoo as soon as they opened at 9am.
• Parking is FREE here (yay!), and you are welcome to bring in your own food and drink. We also brought our own stroller. There is a lot of ground to cover so wear comfortable shoes.
• WOW this zoo is incredible and there is so much to see and do. Very exciting even for Brynnley’s age. Because of our previously-mentioned nap situation, we just made it our mission to see as much as possible before she melted down and needed to head back for a nap. This meant we skipped a lot of the bird exhibits because they just weren’t that exciting to us.
• By 2pm, we covered everything we needed to see and headed back to our townhome. Again Zeb and I took turns walking the Mission Beach area while she slept.
• When Brynnley woke up, we took our beach chairs and toys down to the water and properly played in the sand for her first time ever! Yes, it was chilly but we still made the most of it. We stayed until sunset and then Brynnley started shivering so we walked back to our townhome to cook dinner. This also happened to be Super Bowl Sunday, so we just opted to stay in and cook another dinner for ourselves. We loved shopping at Sprouts (OG readers will know all about my love for Sprouts) since we don’t have them in Idaho!

DAY FOUR:

• This was my birthday!
• Obviously I had to start my birthday off with a really fun coffee…

• I picked a super cute and very pink brunch spot right in downtown San Diego called Morning Glory. I would definitely recommend this place for their food, drinks (coffee and morning cocktails) and atmosphere! Even the bathroom was decorated to the 9’s! I got a hot oatmilk maple latte and souffle pancakes with berry compote.

• From breakfast we drove to Balboa Park. Even though the Zoo is located within the park, there was so much left to see. You can spend an entire day in Balboa Park because it’s full of museums, gardens, playgrounds, eateries and stunning picnic areas.

• We met with a friend who lives locally and I’ve known since elementary school (Hi Johnna!) and enjoyed walking around the Japanese Friendship Garden. We found a playground for Brynnley, and walked around the many beautiful mission-style buildings and museums until again, time to get Brynnley back for naptime. (Brynnley’s sleep schedule was the biggest challenge of planning a vacation. If that little girl would sleep in her car seat or stroller, life would be so much more open right now!)
• At 5pm, we arrived at Windansea Beach in La Jolla for family photos. I’ll share the family photos in my next blog post! We had beautiful weather and the photos only took about 30 minutes. It was a bit too chilly to stay and continue playing at the beach so we just headed straight to dinner.
• I wanted sushi for my birthday dinner and heard good reviews for URBN Sushi. It was great!
• After Brynnley went to bed, Zeb and I had some ice cream and played some cards back at our AirBnB to wrap up my birthday celebration.

Day Five

Our last full day here! Again, I won’t bore you with including the travel day since it most likely won’t apply for you unless you’re also an Idahoan with a toddler!

• We left our AirBnB around 8am and headed to a waterfront area of San Diego called Embarcadero. There were parking areas but they all seemed to have 3 hour max limits, so we did have to move our car once.
• Zeb picked our coffee shop of the day and he did a great job! Portside Coffee has a little walk-up order window right along the harbor next to a huge pirate-looking ship. Then the seating area is in a glass sphere looking out onto the harbor and cruise ship dock. Great coffees here too.

• We used our CityPass to enter the USS Midway Museum, an enormous naval aircraft carrier ship. We spent a little over 2.5 hours exploring this ship and we probably could have spent even more time if we didn’t have Brynnley with us. Although, most of it is very toddler-friendly. She LOVED getting to sit in each of the aircrafts and push all the buttons. There were dozens of military airplanes, helicopters and tugs that guests were welcome to tour and sit in.

• You can grab an audio device when you enter and wear it around your neck. At various points throughout the ship, there are places to hold up your device and listen to a narration of what’s going on to learn more about when the ship was in active military use.
• We really liked checking out the bunk and dining section of the ship below deck. I could easily have gotten lost, it has so many different rooms and passageways!
• We continued walking along the Embarcadero to Seaport Village. I love this area! It’s so nautically-themed and charming. Seaport Village and Old Town are two areas of San Diego you must see.
• We grabbed lunch at Crack Tacos and enjoyed it at some picnic tables right next to the water. Again, great for toddlers because there’s plenty of grassy area for them to run and play. Brynnley even found another 2 year old girl from Germany to dance with for a good 10 minutes!
• There’s an iconic Carousel in Seaport village that costs $5 per person.
• We attempted a car nap for Brynnley this day, because she seemed VERY tired after such an eventful morning. I dropped Zeb off at the Air & Space Museum in Balboa Park while I drove around until her eyes finally closed. I did have success in her falling asleep in the car, but she woke up about 15 minutes later as soon as I put the car in park back in the museum parking lot and that was as much sleep as she got that day. Crazy girl!

Some other trip details:

• I’ve rented plenty of cars over the years, usually through Expedia, and I’ve never had an issue. This was our first time using Payless car rental and it was my worst car rental experience ever. I would not recommend this company. When we booked the car, we plugged in our estimated pick-up time and were quoted about $250 for an SUV for the week. We arrived about 2 hours after our pick-up time, but with flight delays and travel issues nowadays I would assume that is very common and there would be a grace period. We were told that because we missed our pick-up window, our car was given away and the next option was going to be $800 for the week. However when we walked to the car lot, we saw many other basic options like the KIA Soul we ended up with. After back and forth for over an hour, they finally (grumpily!) agreed to charge us $280 for the Soul which I’m not sure why that wasn’t an option from the start.
• Our AirBnB did not have a crib available but I was able to rent one through a company called Baby’s Away. They worked with the rental property to have the crib delivered and set-up before we arrived. We also rented a high chair from them. This was pretty affordable and convenient.
• Another consideration when booking a hotel vs. rental home at a coastal location – most of the rental home properties I looked through all included beach chairs, umbrellas, beach toys and coolers. As far as I know, that’s not the case with most hotels. This makes your beach trip so much more convenient!
• CityPass was definitely worth it, in our experience. You can purchase the CityPass in advance and you just need to use it within a year of purchase. However you must visit your attractions within 7 days of each other.

Let me know if you have any questions about anything I covered in the comments and I’ll get back to you! If you are also travelling with a toddler, I have a video and blog post I put together with my best flight & vacation tips here!

See you next time! Love,

Kenz