A long weekend in California

California.

How do you begin to express how happy you are when you book a flight to somewhere you've always dreamed of going? California was our place. Forget Tahiti, Forget Paris. Forget Iceland or Alaska or Hawaii... (though we'll go to all those places soon enough). For us, we just NEEDED to go to Cali first get it off our mind.

How did we find a RT flight from Florida to San Diego for $160/person?

When we told people that we booked the flight for that crazy cheap they literally didn't believe us.

Here's how we did it:

Download flight apps on your phone and TURN ON notifications. There's a few that you can download that will allow you to search for a particular destination within a time frame and let you customize completely what you want... and it will NOTIFY you when it's found a match or even something close! This means if you can't scour the internet for countless hours, you still have a good chance at finding a well priced flight with very minimal work. Here are the apps I use: Hitlist, Skyscanner, and Hopper.

Hopper is the app that notified us that our trip to San Diego was going to be cheapest during the month we booked the flight. We just customized the dates that worked best for us. It also let us know that if we flew from a different (somewhat) local airport, that we'd save close to $60/person on the flight tickets. Yes, the airport was an hour away vs. the one 10min away from us, but the collective savings between the group made up for having to pay for parking.

Once hopper alerted us, I did some digging on Skyscanner to look at price differences througout the days we wanted to fly. Typically, Thursday flights are cheaper than Friday flights and Weekday flights are cheaper than weekend flights... BUT we found that we could pick a Friday overnight flight into San Diego and get back home using an early morning/overnight flight on a Monday morning so it decreased the days we needed to take off while using our departure day to the fullest.

Another trick we use to get the best out of our flight savings is to book a late night Thursday flight so all we have to do is take a Friday off and BOOM! Long weekend used to it's fullest!

For hotels and rental cars, we usually book through my Southwest Credit Card (it gives you extra points when you book through them, and they have better deals). It gets a bit tricky though, sometimes Hotels.com will have better deals or you can airbnb it. Hotels.com is nice because you get a rewards system that leads to a free night after 10 stays booked, so if you don't have a southwest card, I would suggest the hotels.com reward system.

Back to Cali though, we must share the fun we had!!

Our first day in San Diego wasn't actually spent on San Diego. To be up front, we got distracted by the coastline and didn't have time to venture into the heart of San Diego. That's for a future trip. So the whole first day was spent slowly cruising up the coastline to Huntington Beach. We stopped all along the way at places like La Jolla (which completely blew our minds). We made a stop in Del Mar, Carlsbad, Laguna Beach, and finally at our hotel in Huntington Beach. You'll see photos of the Mustang convertible we just HAD to rent, as well as the seals all along La Jolla beach. They're adorable.

The second day we cruised into Oceanside, Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Santa Monica.

We found that the coastline fog is insane, cold, thick, and always there. We found that California doesn't wake up early since the time difference had us all awake at 5am, and we discovered that the Hollywood sign community sucks for tourists, and that it is not a sundress and sandals appropriate hike, but it is fun to drive around with the top down just taking in the beauty. Yes, LA traffic sucks, but not any more than our home of Tampa, so that wasn't much of a surprise.

We watched ninja warriors train in Santa Monica Pier, and ate corndogs while contemplating where we went wrong in life that we couldn't swing like monkeys or leap 20ft in the air like the people we watched. Needless to say, we ended that night by sitting in the hot tub at our resort, sipping on margaritas, and learning about the lives of whoever wanted to talk.

On the last day in beautiful Cali, which was my personal favorite, we decided to test out a pinterest find of mine. Yes, I use Pinterest to plan my vacations. I found a suggestion for a hike called Ho Chi Minh Trail and it was beautiful in the photos and looked like it led between rocks straight into the ocean. With much trouble because it's hard to find an address for it, we FOUND it! Let me add more !!!!!!!! because it was the best moment ever. The trail is sandwiched between two luxury homes and there's no trail marker. There's a grafittied poll...

We saw a fit looking person walk out of the space between the houses and I figured I'd ask if it was "that trail thing" and it was... with an awkward warning of "good luck" by the stranger. We laughed and walked into it. About 50ft passed the entrance, it opened up into the most beautiful misty mountainous ocean-view valley. We literally couldn't believe what we were seeing. It didn't seem right to have that so incredibly hidden!!! So we walked (or more to tumbled down) into the hardest hike any of have yet to go through. It wasn't a long hike, maybe a mile in total, but the changes in elevation and rocky path with crevasses and erosion made it tricky. My husband and I decided we'd hike the whole thing and just meet our friends at the half way point because they didn't feel comfortable having zero experience with a near vertical path at one point. My mind was blown though. It was beautiful and if you're ever in the area of Torrey Pines Park, GO!

After the hike we found a place on the coastline of San Diego called sunset cliffs and it yet again, brought to a halt to just stare at a place to beautiful. We don't have rocky coastlines in Florida and we are pretty far from any place that would so seeing this for the first time in California was just amazing.

Side note: the food was everything we dreamed of. From tacos, to breakfast sushi, Thai food, to mimosas and margaritas, it was all fantastic (some expensive, but great!).