San Clemente

We spent the week before Christmas at a very charming resort in San Clemente, the Grand Pacific Resort at San Clemente Cove.

 The resort was across the street from the San Clemente Pier.  This is a great location as there is a train that runs in front of the resort that can take you to San Diego or Los Angeles.  Also there is a great walking trail that runs along the ocean with great views.  The patio from our room overlooked the ocean and you could watch the surfers all day long.  Here is a picture I took of the sunset from our patio.

 

The town of San Clemente is very quaint, all the houses and stores are white stucco with red terrazzo tile roofs.  The main street is tree lined with twinkle lights at night.  Many interesting boutiques for shopping.  John and I golfed two times while we were there.  Nice courses but I thought they were pretty difficult for women.  

We spent one day at the Dana  Point Marina drooling over the yachts (also shopping again). You can also take a boat over to Catalina Island from this marina.  The last time we were down there we took an evening dinner cruise that was amazing.

We also spent one day at the Getty Villa and Museum.  I really recommend this as it is free, all you do is pay for parking.  You can make your reservations online.  Here are a few pictures from the Getty

 

This was a very relaxing vacation and we loved the resort, everyone was very hospitable, they even had a free margarita social one night to get acquainted with other guests.  We loved laying around and listening to the ocean waves.  Our good friends Joh and Jim came to visit us there and we had rousing games of Mexican Train Dominos

.

 On the way home John and I stopped at the outlets in Tulare (we always do this, we tell ourselves we're just stopping for lunch but really it's for the shopping.)  I was walking through the parking lot and I found a man in a pickup truck selling darling Jack Russell puppies.( clearance puppies).  I dragged John over there and told him I needed this puppy.  It took him a half hour to convince me that we are not the kind of people that should have pets because we travel so much.  As I walked away pouting a revelation came to me that my grandson needed this puppy for Christmas and my daughter agreed with me.  We bought the puppy and brought it home.  Here is a picture of the puppy, now I ask you could you resist this.....

Her name is Tipper, but I call her Zelda (after F. Scott Fitzgerald's crazy wife Zelda)  as she can be just sweet as can be and then just gets crazy and eats anything she can get her teeth into.  She found a piece of red taffy and proceeded to lick the candy and then licked it all over her body until she was a red mess.  Stay tuned for the adventures of Zelda.

Happy New Year to all our friends.    Well until next time Happy Blogging.   Life is short, fill each day with happy memories. and stop to smell the flowers