Carlsbad, CA in January

Staying at the Carlsbad Inn was nice. We stayed at the Carlsbad Inn Beach Resort in a two-bedroom unit on the third floor of the Oaks Condos from January 6 to January 13. Easy to get to and right across the street from the beach. There is a nice walkway along the coastline too, where you will see a lot of joggers and walkers.

The resort is located in Carlsbad Village with various shops and restaurants within walking distance. The beach is across a quiet, residential street. Boogie boards, beach chairs, and umbrellas can be signed out in the activity room at no charge. They also have bikes, board games, and pool towels you can sign out there. The gym is in an area of the activity center where you sign out these items. The game room didn't have much. There is a pool table and about three video games.

Enjoy a trip to the San Diego Zoo. The resort offers trips to Hollywood and Mexico. These sounded nice but were per person cash or check, and we couldn't afford that for all of us. They sounded really nice though.

Quick Tips:

Check out other airports. If you are flying in on a weekend, John Wayne Airport (SNA) was easy to get in and out of and cost us less to get tickets there last minute.

Three of us flew into San Diego on Saturday and the other two flew in to Orange County (SNA) on Sunday. It was an easy ride up to pick them up. Tickets were less to fly in there too for some reason. I did a search on Kayak.com, which allows you to search multiple airlines and airports easily, selecting and deselecting ones you don't want as an option. If it weren't for this site, I never would have thought to look for this airport.

We did the deep sea fishing out of Oceanside to avoid traffic. Make sure you ask about any rental fees, etc. so you know your true price. They quote you boat only. Also, you can't bring on board any coolers, and there are various other rules that other companies may not have. Ask before you go.

Best Way To Get Around:

There are a lot of options for food and some shops in town, but I would recommend a car. The express train is just a couple blocks away and this is another option to get into the city.

The swimming pool is a little on the small side, but it was clean. There is a kid's hot tub by the pool and a separate adult one on the other side of the lawn. There are some lounge chairs by the pool and others around the lawn area. The adult hot tub was shut down for maintenance most of the time we were there. This was a scheduled shut down that was communicated to us in a mailer about a month prior to our visit.

I'm very pleased with the customer service here. They took care of our room requests and did whatever they could to meet our needs during our stay. The check-in is in the hotel area. The lobby is very attractive with a gas fireplace, fountain, and seating area. They have a library with a big screen TV and seating areas and a terrace room with seating and an outdoor patio. Wireless Internet is available in these areas.

Towels are changed out every other day or you can exchange them any time in the laundry area in the garage. There is a laundry room in the garage also for $1 per machine. They leave soap bars in the bathrooms and have liquid soap dispensers in the showers and on the wall by the bathroom sinks. Automatic dish detergent and regular dish soap are also provided. All the basic kitchen supplies are provided and you can sign out items of limited availability like cookie sheets, crock pot, etc. There is a hair dryer, but for some reason they store it in the living room, so it took a while to find it. There is a full ironing board and iron, carpet sweeper, broom, and dust pan stored in a closet in the master bedroom.

There is a lot of storage for your clothing. Even the living area had a closet and drawers for anyone that had to sleep on the couch. Each of the bedrooms had a TV. The living room had a DVD player and the bedrooms had VHS players.

The hot water heaters could use some upgrading here. There doesn't seem to be much of a choice between ice cold and scalding in the showers. You can eventually find a middle ground, but it's not easy. I'm not really a long shower taker, so this really is below standard for a Gold Crown resort.

The property is well-maintained. They seem to do regular maintenance. The hot tub and one elevator were out of service while we were there. There were some places where they were redoing some of the cement floor in the walkways. The unit itself was clean enough. They have really nice puffy sleeping pillows and they seem to give you extra pillows, which is nice. There were five pillows on the king size bed.

We ate at Fidel's right on the resort property, which was ok Mexican food, the first night. Good enough, but not the authentic Mexican we thought we'd get here. The second night we ate at Coyote Bar and Grill. This also had Mexican fare. I had the salmon with raspberry chipotle sauce. I think that was our most expensive meal and was about $13 so it was a reasonably priced restaurant. They have great tasting guacamole.

We cooked the fish from the deep sea fishing on the grill one night. The front desk had someone go down and turn on the grill and bring down grill utensils to cook with. The grills here are fantastic. Great grills in great shape with a large cooking area. It was my daughter's birthday so we purchased a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cake at their store around the corner from the resort.

As part of signing up for a timeshare tour, they gave us a coupon for a free large 13-inch pizza from Pizza Shuttle. We also ordered two extra to have leftovers at $9 each. Our last night we got pizza from Pizza Port (www.pizzaport.com). For about $30 we got two large one item pizzas and one of their Portzels, a soft whole grain pretzel made with sun dried tomatoes, feta, garlic, basil and oregano mixed in. The pretzel was a bargain at $1 and came with salsa-like tomato dipping sauce and mustard packets. Three locations in the area, Carlsbad is (760) 720-7007. Better pizza than Pizza Shuttle but still not like what we were used to back on the east coast. The place was hopping though. If you choose to eat there, they have picnic style tables and they are also a brewery. Port Brewing is located in San Marcos at 155 Mata Way Suite 104, San Marcos, CA; where you can visit a tasting room and check out what is brewing. The brewery is open Friday from 4pm to 7pm and Saturday from 11am to 3pm. They also have some beer you can order to go from the restaurant.

Jack in the Box was our fast food stop this week for their Oreo shakes and great curly fries. My husband and daughter wished we had one of these back home.

Three of us ate at the Fish Market one night. They fly in fresh fish from areas all over the world. The fish was tasty and not too overpriced ranging from about $15 to $25. The fish is grilled behind a window where you can watch it being cooked and comes with three sides of your choice. They have a bunch of aquariums in the restaurant and large stuffed fish on the walls. You can also buy fresh fish to go here.

Sunday, my husband and son bought last minute tickets to an NHL game in Anaheim (Ducks vs Red Wings), and it was only about an hour drive up there. Traffic was bad leaving the game, but that's true for any event of that type. Us girls walked around town, which was mostly closed up by 5pm, so we'll need to go back sometime when the shops are open. There weren't as many touristy types of shops as I expected.

Monday we went to the beach during the day and we participated in their pizza and bingo night. For $5 each you get pizza, soda, and snacks, and they play five games of bingo. There was plenty of food to go around and the games were fun. We borrowed some board games from the activity center and after playing a quick game of pool (50 cents), we went up to our room for a couple games before heading to bed.

Tuesday we split up and three went on a deep sea fishing trip in Oceanside. It was early, but an easy ride. There were fliers for fishing in San Diego, but the concierge suggested this place in Oceanside. With the weekday traffic this was a great suggestion. It took just a few minutes to get there and was easy to find. There were additional charges that we were not aware of, so be sure to ask questions about what is included. Tuesday was my daughter's birthday and we two landlubbers decided to go to the mall in Carlsbad. There are outlets here too, but we're saving those for another day when everyone can go.

We got five adult passes to the San Diego Zoo for going on a timeshare tour. It was overcast the day we went to the zoo, and quiet since it was January. We did enjoy the zoo but it was a lot of walking. I'm not sure if they are always this way, but we could have brought in our own snacks. They have souvenir cups and you can get cheap refills, but it is still amusement park-type pricing. Three dollars for a churro, $3.50 for a bag of snack food, etc. We were there pretty much the whole day, but we didn’t eat there, so I can't say how much the restaurants charged for food. They did advertise a kids meal that came in a bucket that could be used for a beach toy or something.