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Girls gone wild in sunny San Diego
By Brenda Jones-Contributing writer
San Diego-The absolute best way to start a girls' trip away is with a spa visit. That's exactly what my friend and I did shortly after arriving at our hotel, the Catamaran Resort in San Diego. We were here to shop, to play, to see the local sights, but also to shop some more-activities San Diego ably provides for women looking for fun. But spas come first, which is why once in our water-view room, we changed right away.
While the resort is an older, well-appointed three-star hotel, the brand-new Catamaran Spa aims for five-star luxury. We changed into plush robes and flip-flops and lay down in comfortable chairs in a mock cabana, sipping cucumber-flavoured water before our massages. I signed up for the Island Stone Massage, and my friend a traditional Hawaiian massage called the Lomi Lomi.
Lying on my front with hot rocks applying comfortable pressure to my back and the bottoms of my feet, while another pair of rocks warmed my hands, all the stress of last-minute packing and flying-related anxieties evaporated. Soothing music and massage oil worked in concert with the methodical rubbing of the warm rocks along my arms, back, legs and neck to take me to a carefree and relaxed place.
When reunited with my friend, a spa connoisseur, she agreed that "spa-ing" was the ideal way to start a vacation. She loved the rhythmic rubbing, pulling and stretching of the Lomi Lomi massage that unknotted her tight muscles.
If our visit to the Catamaran Spa put us into vacation mode, then our other adventures in San Diego-a city with fantastic shopping, restaurants, beaches, animal attractions and endless sunshine-put us on cloud nine. We first stayed in the Pacific Beach region of San Diego, which offers beautiful white sandy beaches on Mission Bay as well as some a block away, right on the Pacific Ocean.
It was the shopping, however, that excited my friend. On our second day, she purchased a beautiful retro lamp for only $25, which she'd seen in Gastown for $150. She was certain it would fit in her suitcase if she shuffled some items into her carry-on bag. We both accumulated more parcels during a trip to San Diego's beautiful outdoor shopping centre, Fashion Valley Center, which features upscale stores like Nordstrom, Macy's and Nieman Marcus. However, it was Bath & Body Works that my friend was seeking, as she stocked up on enough scented bath products for the next two years.
While the shopping, restaurants and beaches were wonderful, the highlight of our trip was SeaWorld. Thanks to my job at the Vancouver Aquarium, we were able to participate in some training with the beluga whales, including Allua, who is in San Diego on loan from the Aquarium. We fed Milk-Bones to Arctic foxes, bottle-fed a baby walrus, saw some California sea lion pups that were being rehabilitated for release, and got up close to killer whales, even touching one's dorsal fin.
Baby animals were part of our itinerary for this trip so we went to the San Diego Zoo to see its panda cub, Su Lin. We found her snoozing up in a tree (apparently she sleeps 95 per cent of the day), while her mother, Bai Yun, slept on a large boulder below. Su Lin's father, Gao Gao, was in the neighbouring habitat chomping on long sticks of bamboo as though it was crunchy celery.
We also drove out to San Diego Wild Animal Park in Escondido to see a lion cub that is being socialized with an Italian mastiff puppy. The cub's mother had an emergency C-section and was unable to care for her tiny offspring. As a special treat, we signed up for a photo caravan tour where we rode in the back of a truck and got up close to some of the animals.
If these animal attractions were wild, then our final two days staying in La Jolla, just north of San Diego (considered the Riviera of California) were absolutely tame, and a perfect relaxing bookend to our trip.
We stayed at La Valencia Hotel, a pink, 80-year-old boutique hotel that has seen many celebrities over the years, from Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin in its early days to Oprah and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder .
La Jolla has many cute boutiques selling everything from handmade jewellery to expensive, all-natural cosmetics. The shopping part of our trip turned bittersweet when the night before our flight home my friend realized the lamp she bought wouldn't fit into either one of our suitcases and likely wouldn't be allowed as a carry-on.
We rose early to rush to the post office to find a box for the lamp. Unfortunately they didn't have any that were big enough, so as time ticked away before our flight, my friend scrambled to borrow scissors at the airport and cut and taped together boxes to encase her lamp. Luckily, the woman who checked it allowed it on the airplane. Now it sits in my friend's living room, a reminder that shopping in San Diego is worth the trip.
published on 08/11/2006
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