Happy Anniversary!

Donovan and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary this past weekend, my mom watched the kids and we went to San Diego. We have had this planned since January so needless to say...I was VERY excited! We booked a room at Loews luxury hotels and arrived there around 6:00pm on Friday night. We hand them the confirmation number and the guy looks concerned and excuses himself. He comes back with a manager and we are sweating and thinking "we aren't going to have a room, we're going to have to go back home! Our last anniversary the Honda broke down on the way there and we ended up having to buy a new car while in Las Vegas!". The manager comes over to speak to us saying that the room we reserved is being renovated, that it was supposed to be ready by now but the bathroom vanity hadn't arrived yet. He was very nice and very apologetic. He said we could either take a different room, but they didn't have any king size beds. We would get a room with 2 double beds and no view. I could tell that Donovan DID NOT like the double bed idea! Or he said he pay for and book us a room at another hotel for tonight (Friday) and then we would come back Saturday and have a nice room with a king size bed and a view. So we decided to go to the other hotel. It was called Manchester Grand Hyatt

We are getting excited as we drive up to it, it's very close to the Gaslamp Quarter , a fun area with lots of restaurants, shops and bars. The lobby of this hotel is absolutely amazing-sorry it's sorta crooked, I was walking backwards!



the room was very nice, it had a great view:







and this was straight below us, the hotel grounds and pools:



We decide to walk to the Gaslamp Quarter and find some dinner, we found a Thai place...yum! While sitting there we notice quite a few bikes going by. A minute later bikes are still going by. 5 minutes later, still bikes! Apparently it's called Friday Night Bike Ride? I'm not sure if it happens every Friday or just once a year but it was fun to watch! Lots of people were dressed up, some in Mexican Wrestling masks, some in big wigs...so much fun! It probably lasted 10 minutes total, I have no idea how many riders, I am guessing in the thousands. We loved siting outside, people watching is one of my favorite hobbies. After dinner we walked around some more and found a vintage auto store, we loved it! Here are a few of my faves:

Porsche Speedster:




Just like what Dylan drove!


I believe this was a Jaguar:




We walked for about 2 hours and then went back to our hotel where we had dessert, apple cobbler ala mode...YUM! This is the first time I have ever ordered room service, it was so exciting!



Donovan and I are not night owls, we never stay out late. That night we ate dinner at 8:00, dessert at 10:30 and went to bed around 1:00! Craaazy!

The next morning we slept in until 9:30...which we haven't done in...oh probably 7 years! It was awesome. We got ready and went to Balboa Park. We went to the Automobile museum, here are some of my faves from there:


a close up of the engine:


and a close up of the awesome hood ornament:


the gear shift:


A gorgeous Indian:




This one is for my dad:




I LOVED this one, It is a 1953 Jaguar.

One amazing thing about this place is that they tell you how many MPG they got, how much they originally sold for, HP, all the details you usually never get to see.

This was anther fave, it was a Studebaker.


Here we are walking around the park:


The arcitecture there is stunning, Paige if you haven;t been there you must go!!
















We saw some fun street preformers:






It was just about time to check back in to Loews so we went there and they were very kind and said that our room was all ready for us and that they upgraded our view! I was dying to see this room and I was not let down, it was amazing!







The bathroom was gorgeous, I told Donovan I want mine to look EXACTLY like this:




Drum roll please....


Gorgeous!









The hotel was very kid friendly, they have babysitting, a kids room, a teen room, a kids pool, a family pool and an adult pool, drive in movies that can be seen from the kids pool. They also had this cute kid eating area:


Chess:


Here is the hotel lobby:






The manager also told us that they were going to give us a free meal at their 4 start restaurant inside the hotel. It one of the best meals of my entire life, I had beef tenderloin and Donovan had salmon. Yum! Here was the view from our table:





After our meal we went swimming and in the spa and watched The Dark Knight on HBO!

It was such a great anniversary, I wouldn't have changed a single thing.