PLEASE NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS INTENDED TO PROMOTE SALES AS A TRAVEL ADVISOR, I WOULD APPRECIATE YOUR BUSINESS IF YOU DECIDE THIS VACATION IS FOR YOU.

When my annual fitness conference announced that it was going to be held in San Diego, I couldn't wait to make it a long weekend and explore a city that I had not been to in close to 30 years.  My husband had never been to San Diego either, so we knew that we would have a fun time exploring.   We spent 4 nights in sunny San Diego, arriving on a Wednesday night.  Once we were checked into our room at the beautiful Marriott Marquis Marina, we headed down to the bar for a late dinner before heading to bed.

The Marriott is a lovely hotel, staff was very welcoming and check-in process went smoothly.  Our room was very spacious and had a very nice view of the Marina area and overlooked the pool.  It's a fairly large hotel with two towers and next door is the San Diego Convention Center, so the hotel gets busy.   That being said, it was perfectly located for my early morning events at my fitness conference.  The pool area is nice and we did spend one afternoon enjoying the San Diego sunshine!  We dined in the bar a few nights (late night snack), had lunch in the restaurant and also dinner one night in their finer dining restaurant across from the pool area with a friend.  No complaints about food or food service.

As for our time in San Diego, we did a lot!  Our first morning we jumped on the hop on/off trolley to get an overview tour of San Diego.  This was well worth our time and money to see everything and decide where to spend more time.  We got off in Old Town and had lunch at a wonderful Mexican restaurant, did a little shopping and then got back on the trolly heading back to our hotel.  We freshened up, had a local friend meet us for dinner at our hotel and then went dancing where we met up with a few more friends who live in San Diego and also another couple who was visiting.  "In Cahoots" was a fun country dance venue, though sad to say at the time of writing this review (a year later), the club has closed due to increasing rent. 

Our second full day, we got up and walked to the USS Midway to tour.  We spent about 3 hours touring & had a quick "fast food" type of lunch from their snack bar before walking next door to our next adventure of the day- the "Patriot" crazy boat ride around the bay!!  We walked all around the area very easily and headed back to our hotel by the end of the day to rest up and head out again to meet our friends for some more dancing.

The next day was my fitness conference and I was up early to get to the USS Midway as that was where BODYCOMBAT was going to be held, it was a pretty awesome experience!  After that, all 500 instructors walked back to the convention center to continue with the fitness continuing education.  I finished about 11am and met up with my husband for lunch and a day by the pool.   When the day was over, we met up with other local friends in Old Town for a wonderful Italian dinner.   After dinner, we stopped off in Gastown for an after dinner drink, watched the area come to life and eventually hired one of the really cool pedicabs to take us back to the hotel.  We could have easily walked, it was not very far at all- but the pedicabs looked like so much fun all lite up and blasting music.

Sunday we packed up and went home, really having had a wonderful time in San Diego.  It's a great beachtown with so much to see and do.  We didn't even come close to doing everything that San Diego has to offer, so we will be back!  One of these years the Giants vs. Padres schedule will work with my schedule and we can go down for a Giants game weekend!

To view photos from our weekend in San Diego- click here:  2018 San Diego Weekend