CalActive.com Activities Blog

Last Friday we received a visit from our friends and makers of the fantastic Go San Diego Card (click the link to order your very own card). Actually, they make Go Cards for many different destinations, such as Los Angeles, Boston, Orlando, Miami, Chicago and many others. It’s such an amazing idea, really. You purchase a card that comes with a free guide. The guide has tons of ideas for things to do locally and will get you in at no additional cost to about 50 different attractions.

The representative that paid us a visit was nice enough to leave us a couple of Go San Diego Cards to try out. At some point in the next couple of weeks two of us will be going to San Diego to enjoy the benefits of the card. Looking at the guide, there are so many different things to do, it will be tough.

Here are my initial thoughts:

Breakfast at the Cheese Shop Restaurant and Delicatessen. I LOVE CHEESE AND BREAKFAST. We get 20% off our breakfast and a Free Frisby! We need one of those down in Laguna Beach - Orange County!

Tour PETCO Park. I am a big baseball fan, and going to take a tour of the San Diego Padres home park sounds like a perfect thing to do. How could I miss this?!

Wine Tasting! Why would we not go drink some free wine?

You will have to wait to find out what we actually end up doing

Sometimes fear stops us from doing some of the most exciting and adrenaline packed things in life. Ever since my friend passed along her copy of “One Month To Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life,” I treat everyday as the most important!

News or friends inform us about such stories that relate to life, and often make us wonder why things happen the way they do. For example, this morning there was a rare and freak shark attack in Solana Beach, San Diego. A 66 yr. old man in great shape was training for his next triathlon and was freakishly bitten by a shark and didn’t survive. And then I stumble upon a more uplifting story where a 96 yr. old former US Navy pilot took a trip to Knott’s Berry Farm so he could take in some excitement and ride the fastest rides there, regardless of being in a wheelchair.

His daughter mentioned that “He doesn’t get out at all, so sometimes I plan a day where we go out,” she said. “That morning, I told him, ‘If you get out of bed, I’ll buy you breakfast, and maybe we could take a ride up to Knott’s.’ He liked that idea.”

How I look at…we’re dealt with a deck of cards each day - you can play or pass. I’d rather play!

There have been so many fantastic ‘firsts’ since coming to live in the great US of A, but one of the most unnerving was at my first Orange County Fair, where my carniverous husband returned to the caveman within when confronted with an entire table of turkey legs…viewer discretion advised when looking at the photo below, as it is not a pretty sight. I was reminded of the interesting phenomenon of ‘Fair Food’ on another blog earlier today, and it prompted me to go and dig out some of our pics of the fair last year - such fun and a real experience in Americana. More recently we visited Disneyland - a first for me - and that was absolutely fantastic. I had been debating whether to go to Knotts Berry Farm or Disney and in the end I’m really glad that we chose Disney, as although I don’t doubt that Knotts is brilliant too, I admit to being a bit of a nerd when it comes to those humungous rollercoasters and preferred the sound of a chance encounter with Eeyore followed by an Indiana Jones ride and Splash Moutain - although even that was a bit scary at points, notably the 50 foot drop into a large plunge pool…Space Mountain was everything I had heard it would be, and I would have gone again had the line not been over 2 hours long by that stage. The Fast-Pass is a stroke of genius and meant that we got to do all the rides we wanted to during the course of the day. Another incredible thing was seeing ‘ASIMO’ the robot strutting his stuff - Honda’s Humanoid Robot. He can walk, dance, ascend and descend stairs and even run - it was really hard to believe that there wasn’t a wee person inside that little robot body. All in all it was a brilliant day and we even got a free pass to go back to California Adventure park within the next 30 days, so maybe I’ll pluck my courage up and get to go on one of those terrifying rollercoasters after all.