We have tons of photos to share from our trip to California, but I thought I would share the BEST parts first – the food and wine of Southern California! Yeah, there are beautiful landscapes on the West Coast and the weather is perfect all year and there are so many historic sites that are worth seeing, but I was most anxious to eat the best Mexican food EVER and drink SoCal wines! We totally indulged ourselves in all the deliciousness that Cali has to offer!

Our first stop after we got our rental car was to Old Town San Diego to get guacamole and margaritas! We ended up at Cafe Coyote and the guacamole was pretty good. The Patron margarita was FANTASTIC, but the place is very touristy. Not a bad spot to stop if you want to drink and spend $10 on margaritas, but downtown San Diego does a ton of happy hour specials with half of margaritas and appetizers!

While Matt was at the first day of his conference, I went out to lunch alone and ended up at a sushi place in downtown San Diego called Ra. In addition to great Mexican food, California also has incredible sushi! The sushi at Ra was sooo fresh that I think it was still moving! Absolutely delicious! I was so excited about my experience that I brought Matt back with me the next day for lunch!

On Monday evening we grabbed dinner with Jenny & Miguel before heading out to the shoot their photos at the San Diego Fair. They were so sweet and treated us to dinner at Urban Bar & Grill. We were chatting so much the poor server had to keep coming back for our order because we’d never look at the menu! Good time! I had a great salad but mostly we enjoyed the company!

Jenny & Miguel educated us on San Diego happy hour, so the next night we went to La Puerta, a place they recommended. It was a tiny place but it was so packed! We quickly found out why. It happened to be Taco Tuesday and they had $2 street tacos (which are not the cheapest in town, believe it or not, but still a great deal) and half off ALL drinks. Even their $50 shot of their best tequila was half off (and no, I didn’t do one!). I did try all of their margaritas though. Had they been full price I would have been disappointed. They were okay for the price, but I tried all of them because none of them really wowed me. The street tacos were good and the guacamole was YUM! For half off it was definitely a great place to go!

On Wednesday we went to Matt’s #1 destination for food: World Famous in Mission Beach! Matt will tell anyone you have to go to World Famous on Wednesdays for the $1.50 lobster tacos. You have to order it in the bar area and you can get them from 4-11pm. We ended up eating 5 lobster tacos each. Sooooo delicious!! They are topped with shredded cabbage and ranch dressing. Mmmm!!! We even talked about going back again before 11pm. We didn’t, but the thought definitely crossed our minds!

We saved the best for last, though. Just before we headed to the airport we went back to Old Town (which is close to the airport) and went to Rancho La Lena. We went there on our first trip to San Diego for lunch and forgot just how good the food was. Honestly, the place was empty and doesn’t have the atmosphere that some of the more touristy places in Old Town. But what they DO have is THE BEST guacamole we had our whole trip and just amazing food overall! We were also serenaded while we enjoyed our last meal in San Diego. We are kicking ourselves for not going to Rancho La Lena on our first day. It was definitely the best of the trip! 2367 San Diego Ave – check it out if you head to San Diego!

Now on to THE WINES! Matt & I LOVE Temecula. Since our first visit to Temecula things have changed a bit. I would say Temecula was a little more humble on our first trip and even when I was there about a year ago, but this trip I noticed that the cost for a tasting has gone up (used to be $5 now most places are $10) and most bottles are more around $30 when before we’d bring back bottles for under $20 each. It’s still a great way to spend the day. We found several coupons on the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association website for 2-for-1 tastings, so we were able to save some money on the tastings. We visited three wineries: Thornton, Miramonte, and La Cereza. The tasting at Thornton was relaxing (sitting on a patio with the wines being brought out to us), but we didn’t actually like any of the wines we tasted enough to bring some home. Nice place to start, though, and have a little snack before going on to the other wineries. Miramonte was a fun place. The wines were pretty good but the people who worked there were very friendly. Probably my favorite of our stops in Temecula. La Cereza’s wines were pretty good. At first the lady who served us wasn’t very chatty, but she warmed up a bit.

Pics from Thornton Winery:

Three wineries in the span of a couple hours is A LOT of drinking, so be careful. I always seem to get a little too tipsy when I go to Temecula. Before heading up to meet my friend Jess in Mira Loma at another winery (about 45 minutes away), we stopped for lunch at La Cacita Nueva in Temecula. Killer food, but it was an INSANE amount! I think I took 2 bites out of the burrito and I couldn’t eat the rest. Just thought I would give it a mention, though.

La Cacita Nueva – the plates of food were ridiculous!

I think my favorite stop was Galleano Winery in Mira Loma. The tasting is FREE! You can’t beat that. And they changed my view of zins completely. Their Dos Rancheros Zinfandel is great and I brought some home last time.

Here are the wines we picked up:

Miramonte – Numero Uno Sangria and the Four Torch Red
La Cereza – Sangiovese, Shiraz, and Raspberry Champagne (20% off 3 or more bottles, so the last one paid for itself)
Galleano – Syrah and Almond Champagne (Wiebel Vineyards label)

We also made another stop in Mira Loma. I don’t know if you have ever seen the movie “Changeling” with Angelina Jolie, but the town where the murders took place was actually Mira Loma. It used to be called Wineville but after the murders and all of the bad press they changed their name. Actually, during the movie I was thinking “Oh, I went to wine country not far from LA” and it turned out to be the same town. Creepy! Anyway, the house that the killer lived in is still standing. The chicken coops are all gone but the house is there. I saw an interview of the woman who lived there after the movie came out and she didn’t even know the history of the house! Can you imagine? She has since moved out and when we went by the house was being worked on. I’m not sure why they don’t just tear the thing down. I guess no matter what you do it’s still the site of where it all took place. Such a sad and scary story! Here’s the picture of the house as it looked last week:

I know that was a lengthy post but I promise the rest of our California posts will have more photos. Lots of beautiful scenery, critters, historic sites, and… VEGAS!! photos coming up soon!