tourist tuesdays: san diego with sam!

hello friends! i'm so excited to have a fellow so cal girl here to share all about one of my favorite places with you, san diego!  sam is one of my wonderful sponsors and like she will mention, her and i are super new blog buddies, but i can already tell from this post that she (and her hubs!) like to have fun.  hey sam, maybe next time i can join you guys on your sd adventures?! whatcha think about that??

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Whoa, hello everybody! I'm Sam and I blog over at The Ellison Family Expansion Plan. (I couldn't think of a longer title.) So, I'm going to be honest here and tell you that Kelsey and I are still in the super-new, getting-to-know-you phase of bloggy buddiness. I mean, I knew that she's a SoCal girl, but it wasn't until just now that I realized that she lives in Orange County, just 20 minutes from where I live. (Surprise!)

When Kelsey offered up a Tourist Tuesday spot, I jumped on it. I thought about where I would write about... I could tell you about my home town in Ohio, but meh. I thought about maybe Cleveland? But no, I really don't know a whole lot about Cleveland, even though I spent 18 years an hour away from it. I love San Francisco, but have only been there twice. I could share with you the cool stuff to do in Orange County, but I don't really do a whole lot of cool things here in Orange County. So, knowing that Kelsey has shared about San Diego many times here on her blog, I dug around to see if my potential Tourist Tuesday post would be redundant. Luckily, I didn't find any of what I wanted to share with you guys, so I'm gonna hop to it.

So, Saaaahn Deeahhgo. My husband, Jamie, and I have spent quite a bit of time in San Diego. More specifically, the Gaslamp District. It's our favorite near-home weekend or just overnight getaway. Unfortunately, traffic on a late Friday afternoon (which is when we usually head down) is usually pure crap. Fortunately, we take the Amtrak train down. It's perfect. The cost of our tickets is about the same as gas and parking if we were to drive, it only takes about an hour and 15 minutes, and the train sells beer.

Another bonus to riding the train is that a good portion of the ride is along the ocean!

Once we arrive, we grab a cab and head to our hotel. (Our two favorites being Omni and Hotel Indigo.) After unloading, we'll head off to any number of places. I'm here to hopefully not-too-lengthily tell what those places are... in no particular order.

First, The Field.

Now, I've never been to Ireland, so I can't really say how authentic this place is... but I can say that it's the most authentic-feeling Irish pub I've ever visited. Just about everything in this place has been brought over from Ireland. It's dark and looks like it should be a little musty with wooden booths and little tables and stools squeezed in every available nook. The decor is dusty farming gear that hangs from the walls as well as shelves crammed full of antique-looking jugs, bottles, plates, and other things. They offer fantastic traditional Irish fare and make the best Irish coffee I've ever had with the cream being whipped by hand in a metal bowl. The Guinness are always accurately poured.

The best beginning-of-the-night pizza can be found at Basic.

While a little pricey, the pizza is delicious and huge. They bring it out to you on a tray. Basic is a lofty and trendy looking place that seemingly offers a great nightlife, but we've honestly never stuck around to check it out. That may have to go on our to-do list.

Probably our most frequented bar in Gaslamp would have to be The Tipsy Crow.

Tipsy Crow earned by love by offering a grilled cheese board.

A combination of 2 basic grilled cheese sandwiches with a shot of Blue Cheese Fondue & Tomato Basil Bisque. Choose from Cheddar, Fontina, Gruyere or Muenster on French White or Malted Brown Wheat

Uhm. YES.

Tipsy Crow has maintained by love by constantly offering a superb selection of craft brew both on draft and in a bottle/can. It also helps that this place has games! Fun games, both big and small. They offer shuffleboard, 4-player Pac-Man, a pool table, and a foosball table. Along with those, the booth seating offers huge checkers and huge connect-four.

However, probably the most valuable of assets afforded by Tipsy Crow is variety. When you walk in, you walk into a bar, but there's more! Downstairs they have another bar in a room that either hosts comedy nights or dancing. But then there's also upstairs. Upstairs has yet another bar and is stuffed with puffy leather couches and chairs. One would expect it to smell of rich mahogany, which it doesn't, but it does have many leather bound books that spectate the pool table.

Our favorite end-of-the-night spot is a quick trip to Ciro's Pizza to take back to the hotel (well, given that we hadn't eaten at Basic and still had leftovers.)

Apparently this place also has a great selection of beer on draft, but to be honest, I've never dined in. I've only ever grabbed a slice at the end of the night, usually kinda drunk. Yikes. BUT. It's perfect. It's just perfect at that point of my night.

So, this post has gotten really long, so I suppose I'll wrap it up. I could easily go on to day two of our San Diego adventures, but maybe I'll save that for another time.

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ahhh, makes me want to hop on the train and head to sd right this minute!  thanks so much for sharing sam!  i can't wait for all my readers to get to know you and your wonderful blog more

!