Introducing Georgia

Following our month long interrailing journey, we went home for a short pit stop of around 4 days before heading to Manchester to catch a flight to California, where we would travel up the west coast from San Diego to San Francisco over the next two weeks.

Our first stop, as you may have guessed, was San Diego. We were there for five days in total, staying at the USA Hostel: San Diego. USA Hostels is a chain of hostels throughout California, and in fact, we stayed at their San Francisco branch too. The San Diego hostel is perfectly located, right in the middle of the Gaslamp Quarter, known for being home to many restaurants, bars, and clubs (which sadly we could not utilise since we aren’t 21 yet) 😦

The hostels also offer free breakfasts, which, I noticed, all 3 of the USA ones we stayed at did. Typically, I found that hostels in the US were more expensive per night than the ones we stayed at in Europe, but there are also much fewer hostels available in America, so we had no choice but to pay slightly higher prices. Don’t get me wrong, they were still considerably cheaper than staying in a hotel!

Anyways, onto San Diego…

Day 1 – San Diego Zoo

On our first day in San Diego we decided to go to the famous zoo. The zoo itself is huge and so you can definitely plan a whole day around going there. Our hostel offered a free shuttle service to the zoo which we took advantage of. Now, I know that zoos are a controversial thing, and I understand this completely and I agree that animals should definitely not be used for our entertainment. However, San Diego zoo does a lot of work to help endangered species and raise awareness of the issues and challenges the animals face. They also have connections with organisations to raise money to aid in saving endangered species; you can donate here if you wish – now that we have that out the way, back to our day at the zoo!

In the zoo you get a map so you can navigate your way around and head to the animals that you most want to see. We got the guided bus tour around the zoo first so that we could see where the animals were and plan our day from there. There are so many enclosures to visit, from reptiles, insects, a goat/sheep petting zoo (which I loved, fyi), Big Cats, elephants, polar bears, you name it, the zoo probably had an animal of the sort. There is also a skyride gondola that you can take from the entrance of the zoo to the other end, and vice versa, which is included in the price of the 1 day pass. Also, credit to Hannah for taking all the photos of the animals that I am about to use…

Day 2 – Ocean Beach

On the second day we went to Ocean Beach, which is a beach around 15-20 minutes away from our hostel in a car. Again, our hostel offered a shuttle here too. This was a very chilled out day, lounging on and walking along the beach all day. A word of warning, San Diego is very hot, so make sure you layer on sunscreen throughout the day because we got some severe sunburn that day, even with sunscreen on! I would have also loved to visit La Jolla beach whilst we were in San Diego, but we didn’t get chance this time round. Ocean Beach is still an awesome place where you can go surfing, go to a bar for a few drinks or just lie on the beach and soak up the sun like we did.

Day 3 – Old Town & Seaport Village

Old Town San Diego is a historical park a few train stops from the Gaslamp Quarter. There are museums there that you can go in and shops selling traditional Mexican items. Old Town is a largely Mexican area, and you really get a feel for the culture when visiting. There are also lots of Mexican restaurants that serve delicious food, which I would highly recommend. Old Town is also home to the ‘most haunted house in America’; the Whaley house. For $8 you can go in the house and look around, which we did as I love all things supernatural, but unfortunately, there were no ghostly goings on while we were there.

I would very much recommend going to Old Town if you’re in San Diego since it’s so different from the modern city today and you can learn a lot about the history and different cultures whilst there.

Seaport village is a short walk from the Gaslamp quarter, and there is a train stop right by it. It is a harbourside area with shopping, restaurants and walking. You can also walk up the harbourside form here to the USS Midway Museum which is a huge aircraft carrier. Next to the museum is the famous ‘Save the kiss’ statue which is also a big tourist attraction. The whole harbour area is really lovely and on a sunny day it is nice to walk down and sit by the harbour for a while, or you could grab a drink and a bite to eat there too.

Day 4 – Balboa Park

On our last full day in San Diego we got our hostel shuttle to Balboa Park, which is located right by the zoo. In the park there are various gardens, restaurants and museums that you can visit. The zoo is also part of the park itself. Whilst there we went in the botanical house, the museum of natural history and a couple of the gardens. You can also rent a small motorised buggy that you can drive around. I think it was around $15 for half an hour, but I could be wrong. Nevertheless it wasn’t expensive and it was so much fun and I would highly recommend doing that if you’re there.

You could spend half a day to a day at Balboa park, depending on how much you want to do with your time, we were there most of the day before going back to our hostel to join the sunset walk, which was good for meeting people from your hostel and from different places around the world!

Next stop, L.A!