Surprise Vacation

The blog has been in hibernation for a couple of weeks here, as I have been on vacation. And keeping with tradition, I'm easing back in with a few stories of where I've been. Not where I first thought I was going, as it turned out.

My husband and I had originally planned a trip to France, but we were forced to cancel at the last minute. After a busy morning of canceling and refunding what pieces we could, we settled in at home for a couple days of "now what?" And then we awoke one morning and impulsively decided: a few days in San Diego.

We've taken trips before that have been quite methodically planned. Overplanned, you could argue, in a few instances -- with many activities stuffed into too few days. This almost entirely spontaneous trip threw things completely in the opposite direction. We'd already slotted our time and money to a trip. We still had the time, and had reclaimed enough of the money for a shorter, closer getaway. So that's what we did.

I don't have a Bucket List as such, and even if I did, I wouldn't have thought to put something like this on it. But there is an exhilarating feeling in going to sleep at night in a place you had no idea you'd be when you woke up that morning. That's what this San Diego trip was, above and beyond the things we actually did while we were there.

Day/night one was fairly short, though. We caught an afternoon flight there and checked in at our hotel. (Here, some pre-planning might have been nice. Never a good sign when the first thing you notice walking into your room are the earplugs on the nightstand in case the traffic noise outside gets to you. Fortunately, the place also had really loud air conditioning.)

We didn't have time for much that evening, but we did get some brewery recommendations from a friend. Very few U.S. cities can compete with Denver on craft breweries. If you're into beer and you live in Denver, count yourself extremely lucky. But San Diego is one of the few places that compares. I've heard that there are as many breweries in the county proper as in all the state of Colorado. So for our first, simple, "wow, we actually just got on a plane and went" night, we went to one of those breweries for a celebratory pint.

The place we chose was Hillcrest Brewing Company. They bill themselves as the world's first "Out and Proud LGBT Brewery." You'd know it from the decor, the bar staff, and the customers. But if you'd somehow missed all that, you'd get it from their cheeky beer names, which include "Crotch Rocket Irish Red," "Hop Sucker Double IPA," the "Banana Hammock Scotch Ale," the "Perle Necklace Pale Ale," and more. We went, drank the beer, got the T-shirts. It was a nice, relaxing end to a surprising and somewhat hectic day.

And there were more days to come...