Our First Baby Free Trip

Greg and I were super excited about our first baby free trip.

Which means he was excited, and I was nervous and tried to bring Darby with us and make my parents come along too so they could babysit.

But when I called my mom to ask, she said, "No. But you can go with your husband on a trip because that's what married people do, and we will come to your house and watch your daughter."

If you read my last post, you know I was an emotional mess the night before we left. But the next morning at 4:30am we were in such a rush, that not only did we leave behind several essential items, I hardly thought about Darby(!)

Then we got to our airport gate and my stomach started churning because I was about to fly thousands of miles away from her. This isn't a good thing because flying makes my stomach churn anyway.

"Great," I thought. "At this rate, me puking on this flight has about a 110% chance of happening."

So I decided to carb load. As it turns out, this method can be useful in situations other than marathons.

I brought my food on our 5:40am flight and while everyone else was looking oddly at my seat tray, I stuffed my face with a breakfast bagel sandwich, home fries and two bananas. I literally could not get enough carbs into my body.

And you know what? Guess who was yawning and nodding off an hour later as the entire airplane stood in line beside me for the bathroom? That's right; me. Didn't get sick. Never even had to pee once on that five hour flight, and anyone who knows me understands the astonishing nature of that fact. Carbs, my friends, carbs.

We arrived in San Diego, tired, sweaty, and hungry (well, Greg was. I was still carb loaded,) and tried to rent a car. That's when we discovered it would cost $20 more per day than we had read online and budgeted. So we walked all the way back inside and tried to order the car on Greg's computer, to the get the cheap rate, but the Wi-Fi wouldn't work.

We had almost given up, but my cheapness was bound and determined. That's when I spotted a list of car rental phone numbers. At my cheapo urging, Greg called the place, told them we needed a car in ten minutes and asked if we could have the internet reservation price. Boom. No idea how that worked.

Getting the car was an adventure in itself, but it paled in comparison to actually driving off the lot into the crowded streets of San Diego with nothing but a rudimentary tourist map that looked exactly like one of those toddler play mats:

 

 The scariest part of this situation is that I was the one left to navigate with the thing, since Greg was trying not to get us into a deadly collision. Fortunately, our hotel was not far.

The place was beautiful and also convenient since Greg's work conference was held on its grounds. We checked in and headed back out with our toddler play map to see some sights.

Coronado Island was our first stop. It's basically paradise, so just imagine heaven and you pretty much have it. I personally have not been anywhere even "sub-tropical" for about a decade, so I basically died.

All the beaches in San Diego are pristine and free to the public, and with easy parking, we were frolicking hand in hand down the water's edge in no time, and please do not think this an exaggeration, because we literally did that.

Then I laid down in the sand fully clothed and threw little fist-fulls of it in the air, and rubbed my face in it, and had some awkward moments of tired mommy in California euphoria before calming down a little and trying to get the sand out of my mouth.

Later that night, we stopped at a legit Mexican place in a little beachside village and asked to eat on the patio since it was "so gorgeous out." Half-way through our meal we realized why the seating host had looked at us a little funny, and why the place was so crowded, yet we were the only people outside: they were all Southern Californians and don't consider 65 degrees as "patio weather." Score one for the New Yorkers.

The conference would not begin until the next morning, so we watched the sunset from the cliffs, and feeling quite relaxed, headed back to our hotel.

We entered our room and started putting our leftovers in the mini fridge, and that's when we heard it: the sound of four college girls giggling and talking as clear as day. They might as well have been in the room with us. We could hear every word, and then one of them broke out into a dramatic rendition of "Where are you Christmas? Why can't I find you? Why have you gone awayyyy?" (It was early October.)

"What in the world--?" we wondered to each other.

Later, a glance in their room when the door was open cleared up our confusion: where there should have been two security doors between our room and theirs, there was only one, and a gaping space where the other had been ripped off.

"Why did we have to get the ghetto room with one security door?" I whined.

"Great," muttered Greg. "I hope they don't keep us up all night.

"I know, me too -- wait a second ... if we can hear every sound they make as if they're right next to us ... that means they can too... ahhh no..."

"Well, I'm glad I brought my computer on our first baby free trip because it looks like we're going to be using the white noise feature this weekend," Greg said decidedly.