For Labor Day weekend this year I decided to get two birds with one stone – visit sunny Southern California and propose to my girlfriend. Planning the trip wasn’t too bad at all.

Saturday

The flight to San Diego was out of Louisville with a three hour layover in Denver, which was helpful since the flight was an hour late departing Louisville. Nothing too special, it being Frontier Airlines and all… I normally don’t fly out of Louisville Standiford Field Airport (SDF) so I was pleasantly surprised by the renovations done recently – the airport was super clean and had tons of food choices.

We arrived in San Diego around 6:30 PM and picked up our rental car, an Audi a4 thru Silver Car. I 100% recommend Silver Car, if you have the option use it. They do not try to up charge or change the price on you, as the goal (at least from what I can tell) is that you buy an Audi later on (Silver Car is owned by Audi). Driving the a4 (it had the premium package) through Southern California was a blast and luckily we never hit any of the infamous San Diego traffic.

Sunday

We managed to hit both San Diego zoos Sunday – the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Safari Zoo. The majority of the time was spent that day was spent the San Diego Zoo. My phone managed to break while at the zoo (the SIM card reader died) so after a productive session at Verizon Wireless we went to In-and-Out, which was very disappointing. I don’t know if it was the location or not but it was nothing special. Whataburger by far is better! The evening was ended on the Los Jolla beach.

Monday
Monday started off early at the Sunset Cliffs. I’m not sure if this is normal San Diego weather (I’m assuming not), but every day it was cloudy until about 10 AM. Even with the clouds, the view over the cliffs was amazing. We parked about a mile away from where the actual park is, which lets you have a nice ocean side walk to the park about back.

From the cliffs we made our way to Point Loma. This park offers a great view of San Diego and the Pacific Ocean, plus is dotted with tons of history. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to fully explore the park and we didn’t make it to the tide pools, so we definitely have to come back.

After going back to our Airbnb, we journeyed out to the Bernardo Winery, Southern California’s oldest winery. The winery, which is located about 30 minutes north of San Diego, offers “wine tasting, a village of unique shops, restaurant, coffee house, beautiful gardens and a little slice of the old country”. Before our arrival, the winery worked with myself and Paparazzi Proposals to create the perfect proposal. When we arrived to the tasting room, Lloyd, a Bernardo Winery employee who was manning the tasting room, recognized me  (he had a photo I sent to go off of). From there he offered to give us a tour of the winery and a glass of wine. The tour ended in the barrel room, which had roses leading to a table set out with campaign and cheese. A photographer, Aimee, who was contracted out with Paparazzi Proposals, was waiting in the background to capture the entire moment.

Tuesday

For the flight back in order to get the best flight times, I had to book the tickets separately and into Cincinnati instead of Louisville. This wasn’t a big issue since Cincinnati (CVG) is only 1.5 hours away Louisville and my brother owed me a favor… The terminal (Terminal 1) at San Diego International Airport (SAN) is not a fun terminal to be stuck in – it has one restaurant, two shops, and not enough seating.

All the photos from this post can be found here.