10th Anniversary trip - Coronado CA - Nov 8-13

James and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary with a kid free 6 day trip to Coronado CA.  We haven't had a kid free trip since we had Elin 7+ years ago. First of all, It's amazing to me that it has been 10 years since James and I got married.   I really would swear it was just 3 years ago.  Second, its equally amazing that we pulled off a trip like this.  Many thanks to his parents, GG & Papa, who came to WA to keep the girls functioning and in school so that we could go.

Why Coronado you may ask?  We had originally planned a trip to Cabo.  With many weird and sometimes scary things happening in Mexico right now we decided to go somewhere within the states. My only criteria was that I wanted to go somewhere were we could just do nothing. I didn't want to spent 6 days running around doing tourist things and sightseeing. I wanted to have quiet time to just relax and spend time together.  Somehow we settled on Coronado and specifically the Hotel Del Coronado after seeing pictures online.   Its a a cute, quaint, old hotel build in the late 1800's on Coronado Island with a beach right off the property.  Perfect place to just relax.

We flew in on a Wednesday night and were treated to an amazing sunset as we drove across the bridge to Coronado Island.

We spent 4 days at "The Del" and loved every minute of it.   In fact, we hardly left the resort and ate most of our meals there.  We found plenty of relaxing things to do like walk on the beach, relax by the pool and sometimes just sitting and doing nothing. It was quite a luxury to have no plans, no time schedule, and nothing to do.  We had an incredible time just hanging out.  

We saw a couple of really great sunset while we there.

Our 10th Anniversary was on Friday, November 10th. We started the day with a walk on the beach.  There was a man on the beach that was building incredible sandcastles.

We had him put in different wording to commemorate our special date.  Ok, honestly, we had him do it the day before and took a picture because he wasn't sure that we would be at the beach on our actually anniversary.   But it really captures our trip in a nutshell.

After we walked on the beach we decided to rent a two person bike and pedal ourselves around the island.  It was about a 7 miles round island trip and took us about an hour and a half.  We had a fun.

We stopped by the bar that evening before dinner for a complimentary cocktail (non alcohlic of course)

We also had a very beautiful anniversary sunset.

We had dinner at the hotel's restaurant called 1500 Ocean. They were very nice and had complimentary appetizers, a card and martinelli's to toast our anniversary.  The food was very very yummy. James says it was the best steak he has ever had.

We spent our final day in Coronado doing a little shopping on the main little street and relaxing at the pool.

It was a such a great getaway and just want we needed.  I would go back to The Del anytime.  And if you are wondering, no, we did not see the ghost.

Part 2 of our trip included a 4 am wake up to catch the 5:55 Amtrak train from San Diego to LA where we would catch the Coastal Starlight train from LA all the way to Seattle.   It was a total of 36 hours on the train.  

We were treated to a beautiful sunrise. 

We had reserved a sleeper car for the long portion of our trip.  It was more like a small closet but it did have a private, very very small bathroom with a shower.   Think airplane bathroom with a shower head at the top.

We settled in for the overnight trip to Seattle up the coast of California.  The train goes right along the coast for several hours.  There were some very beautiful parts. My pictures are not that great. It was a cloudy morning and I'm taking pictures from a moving train.

James kind of took a little nap for a portion of the scenic part.

Just before sunset we headed inland.   

The sleeping arrangements were interesting.  James pulled down the bunk and slept like a log. I slept on the pull out "couch" and didn't sleep much.  It's a little hard to relax, well it was for me, with the lurching movement of the train.  

The next morning we were on the border of CA and OR.

As we went to the dining car for breakfast we saw this cool partial rainbow.

Then we headed up and over the Cascades into the snow and some amazing scenery.

We spent the whole next day (Monday) on the train heading up to Seattle.  

When we got tired of being in our sleeper car we hung out in the Parlour car.

We met some nice people on the train and would spend hours just talking and hanging out.

For meals we went to the dining car.

The food was not great but also not bad. Actually better than I expected. They cook the food onsite in the lower level of the dining car and they offered things like salmon and steak.  The worst part was there was one menu with about 15 options and we had to choose from those 15 options for all of our meals.  Many times we found ourselves discussing what we could chose for our next meal.  What else do you do an a train?  I had foolishly thought I would spend the 2 days on the train catching up on some journaling and reading.  I actually found it was more fun to just sit and watch the world go by.  

We got home to Seattle at 8:30 PM on Monday and were happy to see our girls and get home.  Everyone has asked how the train was and if we would do it again.  We did it for the experience of doing it.  It was fun, I probably wouldn't do it again but it is worth doing once.  

Now that we are home and back to real life I feel like this was a dream.  Did I really get to do nothing for 6 days?

Thank you for an amazing trip James.  I'm excited for the next 10 years of our adventure.  Love you.

Maija