Introduction

After staying at San Diego’s Red House last year, I found out that this year during Christmas, their The View was also available for 95,000 points per night, so I decided to go back and try it again.

Hotel del Coronado is a huge property. The Victorian, where I stayed last time, is the oldest and largest building in the middle of the resort. This time, I was staying at The View, which is the pair of tower buildings on the right side of the photo.

Check-in

On the way there, I stopped in Oceanside for a meal. As a railfan, I naturally had to take a picture of the Coaster yard.

Dell

Then I headed to Lofty in Encinitas for a coffee.

Sipping coffee while photographing trains—what a relaxing time.

To avoid the digital key issues I ran into last year, I went straight to the front desk and asked for a physical key card.

That said, I do have one complaint—how did the key card quality get worse after just one year? Look at the middle; the surface is already peeling!

Thanks to the stingy Gold status that comes with the AMEX Hilton Surpass, they also gave me one of these key cards.

After getting the key cards, I headed straight to the room. My room was on the fifth floor, so up the elevator I went.

Once I got to the fifth floor, I noticed the view outside the hallway windows was pretty nice, so of course I took a few pictures first.

Then I noticed something odd: why did this room door look different from all the others? It was noticeably shorter than the rest—like finding a CA25Z mixed into a 25,000-series consist.

And here’s what the room looked like inside.

I glanced sideways at the balcony and something seemed off... then I stepped outside and, oh wow, a wall-facing room!

You can always count on my unconventional luck.

Fortunately, the balcony on the other side of the room had two small windows with an ocean view.

So this time, even though the balcony was completely blocked, they really did open up a window instead of welding the whole thing shut along with the window... honestly, I was relieved.

I also took some photos of the items in the room.

I headed out for a meal and spotted this interesting thing—a coffee vending cart.

At first I thought it was free... but of course not. A closer look showed that you either had to swipe a card or charge it to the room.

Then I went to Tavern by the entrance for dinner.

A few casual shots on the way back.

I’ll end the first day with this photo.

After waking up, I first took a picture of how this so-called “wall-facing room” looked during the day.

Then I walked over to the hallway window and took a picture of the Red House’s main building.

We went back to the breakfast buffet again. Since it was not a weekend, it was only $49 per person.

After breakfast, we walked around the surrounding area.

The front desk at the Red House still uses those wonderfully historic tassel room keys.

A classic cage-style elevator.

We drove over to Balboa Park to look around.

As it turned out, Chestnut once again demonstrated a talent for being the "god of low-probability events"... the botanical garden we planned to visit was under maintenance... seriously speechless!

With no other choice, we visited some of the other buildings instead.

By the time we got back to the Red House, the sun was already setting.

After wandering around a bit longer, it got dark, so we went to ENO for pizza for dinner.

The Red House at night... I just have to say, the Canon EF 35mm F2.0 IS has really severe corner flare. The bokeh blobs had practically turned into lines...

We walked over to the main entrance to take a photo of the famous thing.

This is it—the coronavirus light!

We slowly wandered back to where we were staying. A true warrior dares to shoot in pitch darkness at the maximum F2.0 aperture and ISO 12,800, and I barely managed to capture the waves!

And that was the end of day two!

On the morning of day three, we went to the buffet as usual.

But today, lots of cute little visitors showed up to see us off. The sparrows were eyeing the food on the table very intently!

After eating, we took a walk along the beach to help digest.

We spotted another kind of cute little creature.

Heading Home

On the way back, we made one stop in San Diego Old Town.

Immaculate Conception Church.

We happened to spot a FlixBus on the road. I wonder whether any of you have ridden one of its newer buses in the brand’s own green livery? My luck was terrible: both times I rode, it ended up being a regular plain-white bus operated by a Partner carrier... honestly, I was speechless!

As a train fan, I still had to end things with a train at the end for a nice full-circle finish: the Pacific Surfliner departing from Old Town station.