We just returned from 19 days away, including a two-week trip to Southeast Asia. I’ll have a separate long report about that trip, but we started with a few days in Southern California. That portion of the trip was necessitated by my wife having a hearing in San Diego Federal court a couple of days before we were scheduled to leave for Singapore from Los Angeles. It made more sense to just go out to San Diego with her and get from there to Los Angeles for our international trip.

We started by flying out to San Diego from Atlanta on a Thursday evening flight. I upgraded our Delta Main Cabin tickets to First Class by using Regional Upgrade certificates. My wife’s flight was reimbursed by her law firm. We stayed at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in the San Diego marina area for two nights using cash as this was also reimbursed as a work expense. From there, we moved up the coast and spent Saturday night at the Mission Pacific hotel, a Hyatt property in Oceanside right across from the beach. I was able to use an expiring Hyatt Category 1-7 free night certificate at this Category 6 property, which would otherwise have cost around $400 or 25,000 Hyatt points.

We took advantage of a 4pm checkout and then drove to LAX to start our Asian adventures. I rented a car from National at San Diego airport on Saturday morning and returned it at LAX on Sunday evening. I’ll post the segments of this trip report this week and start on the Asia trip report next week. As the posts go live, I’ll update the links here:

1 – Flying Delta First Class to San Diego

2 – Manchester Grand Hyatt Review

3 – Visiting the USS Midway Museum and Coronado

4 – Mission Pacific Hotel Review

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