We went on our first trip right after we felt comfortable traveling again after covid lockdowns. We decided to go to our favorite place and one that we were familiar with so there wouldn’t be too many surprises. We headed to Old Town San Diego.
- Hotel changes:
At the hotel (Hilton Garden Inn) we looked at their website to see what restrictions there were in place due to covid. We found that there would be no valet service, no room service, no room cleaning unless you were staying there for 5 nights, the in-hotel restaurant was closed, the pool was open but for limited amounts of people, the spa was not open, but interestingly you could use the gym with no restrictions (I wonder if not that many people workout on vacation and that is why there were no capacity restrictions).
- City changes:
When we went out walking around, we noticed not much else had changed. In our home city we have seen many places closed down due to covid and their businesses just couldn’t make it. But in Old Town San Diego I was incredibly happy to see that not much had been affected. The one noticeable change is that the sidewalks were narrower than the last time we visited since outdoor dining needed to occupy as much space as possible. Also, when you go to a restaurant, they do not have menus you have to use your phone’s camera app to look up the menu with a url code. Another thing I noticed was no more salt and pepper shakers. This change makes sense to me because apparently they carry a ton of germs on those shakers. Instead, they give you either a small bowl with your own salt and pepper or they give you the individual packets. We noticed that some of the shops had capacity restrictions that you had to wait in line until someone exited the shop to go inside. We noticed that the whole city was super populated with travelers. I think people finally started to book travel destinations and, on that weekend, Old Town San Diego was super popular!!!
- Zoo changes:
We also took a trip to the San Diego Zoo. At most of the zoos and aquariums we researched that you have to purchase tickets and reserve your date ahead of time. This was not a big deal to us because we knew we were going on Saturday, and we were able to purchase our tickets online. The second change we noticed was that after you parked you had to stand in an AWFULLY long line to get to the entrance to go inside. I didn’t like this change because I felt to exposed to other people. Having Lupus I did not want to be stuck in a line that felt like a sardine can. Too many people and no one social distancing. My Hubby and son were troopers and stayed in the line while I waited on a rock all by my lonesome self. Once inside the zoo not many changes that I could see. There were some places inside the zoo that our kiddo used to like to climb up on and take a picture. These areas were closed with yellow tape around them. I know they were trying to keep kids and families safe since no one would be there to clean those statues for the next kiddo.
It’s now June and we are headed back to San Diego but this time we are staying in the Gas Lamp area and we are going to walk around there, Seaport Village, and Little Italy. Come back to my blog soon for details on our 2nd after Covid trip.