Jaunted

Tags: Beer Travel / Beer Festival / Drunk Travel / Drinking / San Diego Travel / → All Tags

Guzzle The Nation's Best Brews At San Diego Beer Week

When you think of the U.S.'s best beer cities, places like New York, Portland and Philly always pop into mind. But according to Men's Journal, if you want to guzzle the nation's best brew, you have to head to San Diego. There's no better time to sample some of the city's suds than San Diego Beer Week from November 6 to 15.

San Diego County boasts 33 breweries, and the first-time Beer Week will showcase the local craft beers in more than 100 events, including beer tastings, beer dinners and home-brewing demonstrations. And it isn't just bars that will take part. Restaurants want to tap into Beer Week's potential. "We are encouraging breweries to push the envelope and create events with places not typically associated with craft beer. We know we’ll have support from beer enthusiasts, but we want to reach people who might not know about San Diego’s craft beer scene,” says Colby Chandler, president of the San Diego Brewers Guild, the event's sponsor.

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Tags: Prime-Plane-Spotting-Map / Plane Spotting / San Diego Travel / San Diego / SAN / Southwest Airlines / → All Tags

Plane-Spotting In San Diego Could Become A Literal Kiss-And-Fly

Plane spotting everything from legacy carriers to LCCs isn't all that difficult outside of San Diego International Airport with the hilly terrain, but there's one specific spot that lines up so well with the end of one of the runways that we simply must tell you about it. It's a parking garage.

Specifically, it's Aladdin's Parking Garage, at Kettner Boulevard and West Laurel Street, and it's a multi-level airport parking structure situated so perfectly for watching the activity on the runways at the airport. That said, the parking garage doesn't particularly like their reputation as a prime plane spotting location, and there are signs warning of "no loitering." But until they put up signs that warn "no making out," we'll keep coming back for a little literal Kiss-and-Fly.

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Tags: Restaurant Week / Food Travel / San Diego Travel / → All Tags

Our Top Five Picks For San Diego's Extended Restaurant Week

Get cheap French eats at Bleu Bohème during San Diego Restaurant Week.

The Restaurant Weeks in New York and LA attracted so many diners that the cities decided to add second courses of the culinary event. San Diego is feeling just as generous, also dishing out extra days for Restaurant Week by adding a fall event to the original offerings which were supposed to end last week.

Officials have extended San Diego Restaurant "Week" until September 25. You'd think that all of this Restaurant Week love should be a hint to restaurants that they should permanently add affordable three-course menus during this recession. Still, until they get a clue, we'll recommend some additional places in San Diego where you can get a great meal deal during the extension.

Our Top Five Picks for the San Diego Restaurant Week extension, after the jump.

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Our Top Picks For The Final Days Of San Diego Restaurant Week

The Marine Room serves up a deal for Restaurant Week.

If you've wanted to try out a restaurant or two, there's still a couple days left to put yourself in a food coma during San Diego Restaurant Week, which runs through September 18. More than 180 restaurants are offering sweet deals for three-course meals as part of the fifth annual event.

San Diego Restaurant Week, which usually runs in January, is making its fall debut. This marks the second time this year that Restaurant Week has invaded local restaurants. It seems like this marketing ploy to help struggling restaurants is a new trend, since L.A. also recently made its Restaurant Week a semiannual event. But hey, we'll take it to get some cheap, yummy eats. Restaurants all across the county, from Escondido to Coronado, feature special menus with local, seasonal ingredients. You can score some good discounts, since the prix fixe meals come in packages of $20, $30 or $40, though tax, beverages and gratuity aren't included.

Check out Jaunted's picks after the jump.

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Tags: Theater Travel / Culture Travel / William Shakespeare / Festivals / San Diego Travel / Events / → All Tags

Our Top Three Play Picks For San Diego's Shakespeare Festival

In the Old Globe’s Summer Shakespeare Festival production of Cyrano de Bergerac, Patrick Page plays the nasally-well-endowed titular character and Dana Green stars as Roxane.

If you are looking to wind down the season with one more alfresco outing, head to San Diego's Old Globe Theatre for the Summer Shakespeare Festival. The 74th annual fest offers Bard classics Twelfth Night and Coriolanus and in a break with tradition, Cyrano de Bergerac, the first non-Shakespeare play the theater has featured since it revived the festival five years ago.

The three productions rotate nightly in the Globe’s outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre through September 27. This way, if you're in town for a couple of days, you can catch all three. But if you can only make a day or two, here's a rundown of the shows to help you decide which play to see:

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Tags: Brunch / San Diego Restaurants / Food Travel / San Diego Travel / → All Tags

San Diego's Hash House A Go Go Serves A Food Coma With Brunch

Unfortunately, the cell phone isn't included; it's there to show how ginormous the flapjack is.

Head down to San Diego's Hash House a Go Go on a weekend, and you'll see a bunch of starving and hungover folks waiting outside, eager to get in the restaurant for some hearty home-style eats. That's just the way it is and how it will always be at this famous weekend brunch restaurant. Our tip: Avoid the long wait by heading to the Hillcrest eatery during the week. That way you won't have to wait more than an hour to stuff yourself silly with brunch dishes so large you'll have to either share them or risk a food coma for the rest of the day.

Hash House a Go Go, a mix of city and country with metal chairs, old farm photos, and paraphernalia on the walls, churns out food as fun as its name. Of course, you can't go wrong with the namesake house hashes, like the ground turkey with hardwood-smoked bacon, onion and smoked mozzarella or the meatloaf with roasted red peppers, fresh spinach and smoked mozz. But the bigger-than-your-face pancakes are too hard to pass up.

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Tags: Jaunted Tested / Cruises / San Diego Travel / Boats / → All Tags

San Diego's Harbor Cruises Cater to Couples and Sea Lion Lovers

Hitting the beach isn't the only way to enjoy San Diego's waters. Take a harbor cruise around San Diego Bay to get a different perspective of the city's seas. We tried out two different options through Hornblower Cruises, the romantic dinner cruise and the kid-friendly harbor cruise, to see if they floated our boat.

Dinner Cruise
The Lord Hornblower, a replica of a turn-of-the-century steamship, is usually the vessel that handles the dinner cruises. Unfortunately, it's the most worn-looking member of Hornblower's fleet, with paint chipping in places and dated decor. About 150 people—mostly couples—boarded our cruise, which leisurely circled the North and South Bays. It's best for lovebirds, as the best thing to do is to cuddle out on deck with your sweetie pie to keep warm.

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Tags: Restaurants / San Diego Travel / Mexican Food / Margaritas / Drinking / → All Tags

Try The Lobster Margaritas at Gringo's in San Diego

Trying to find the best Mexican restaurant in San Diego is as hard as finding the perfect pizzeria in New York. But what sets Gringo's Cocina Y Cantina apart from the other Mexican eateries (aside from its awkward un-P.C. name) is its location, just a block away from the ocean. The Pacific Beach restaurant has a following among surfers and beach bums, who all retreat there after a long day of hitting the waves to warm up next to the big outdoor fire pit and get some good grub.

Gringo's is also a popular place to chillax or celebrate with friends, as it trades the schlocky overdone decor of most Mexican fast-food joints for a more upscale, warm setting. Plus, there are those big-as-your-head, 26-ounce "Gigante" margaritas that come in fun flavors like Frida Rita (Cazadores Reposado, triple sec and pomegranate juice) and Melonita (1800 Silver, melon liqueur and a splash of orange juice) that make any gathering a great time.

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San Diego Thinks They're So Hot They Need A Water Boutique

It's summer. It's hot. We're thirsty. Talk about a perfect time to open up a water boutique, especially in the heart of San Diego's Little Italy where paying over $4 for a bottle of water could be considered cool since it's the "largest bottled water market in the world."

Literally tapping into that market is the Numero Water Boutique, which opened earlier this summer, bringing various kinds of imported fancy-dancy water to town, including their own brand of H2O from Japan's Mount Fuji. According to the San Diego News Network, the unique space branches beyond water with a tea room, rock garden and even ikebana flower-arranging classes.

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Tags: Contests / San Diego Travel / Sea World / Surfing / California Travel / → All Tags

San Diego Lets You Know They Have More Than Just Shamu

With the mercury rising to almost unbearable temperatures in some parts of the country, it's nice to know that San Diego is one of those rare destinations that offers a postcard-worthy experience in a comfortable, temperate oceanside climate. Think adventure activities and the option to spend your days lounging on the beach—and that's just scratching the surface. Enter the Chill Out in San Diego contest and beat the heat with one of two robust vacation packages, depending on what your idea of an ideal getaway consists of.

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Tags: Celeb Travel / Anna Paquin / Stephen Moyer / Sea World / San Diego Travel / Comic-Con / → All Tags

Bill and Sookie Cuddle the Penguins at Sea World

This year, it seemed like a ton of celebs flocked down to San Diego for Comic Con from Robert Pattinson to Scarlett Johanssen to Johnny Depp and Megan Fox. And just how do all the Diegans feel about celebs invading their turf? Um, they kinda love it. Since most of the celeb actions happen "so close yet so far" away in Los Angeles, San Diegans actually get pretty thrilled when they spy celebs walking down their streets, or so one of our local friends says.

Still, it's good to see that the sexy vampire-human couple, Bill Compton and Sookie Stackhouse (aka Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin of True Blood), did the tourist thing and visited some of the attractions of San Diego during their Comic-Con stay. The duo hit up Sea World and frolicked with the penguins at the park's Penguin Encounter. JustJared.com has all the pics of the cuteness.

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Tags: Geek Travel / Comic-Con / San Diego Travel / → All Tags

No Wormhole Necessary: Be A Great Comic-Con Traveler Next Year

Phew! We were nerded out this weekend from reading the stream of news from Comic-Con happening in San Diego. From Sam Raimi stepping up to direct a forthcoming "World of Warcraft" movie to five blistering minutes of "Iron Man 2" introduced by Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Jon Favreau and Don Cheadle, the buzz from the annual nerdfest gave us something to look forward to this fall on the small screen and beyond.

A New York Times article today addresses how a very special group of people also headed to Comic-Con: The actors, producers and creators of "LOST," whose big LOST news coming out of the conference was that next season will involve (spoiler?) no time travel at all. Getting all the necessary LOSTies to San Diego for their presentation Saturday involved a working budget of over $25,000, way more than even its most diehard fans would pay to attend. But judging by the frenzy of coverage the event, which included sketch comedy and a wooden seagull given away to a lucky fan picked online, every penny was worth it.

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