Balderramas in California 2024: Day 1 – Beach Day

The girls and I visited California this week to soak in some sun, Disney magic, and family fun. This is the second time the girls and I have been to California, taking roughly the same trip seven years ago, back when Clara was 4, and Mariana was 18 months. Now that they can make memories, we set out to revisit these places and create some new ones.

We woke up at 3 a.m. on Monday, boarded an airport shuttle, and flew out of DIA at 6:45 a.m. The prices on early-morning flights always seem great until the morning you have to wake up and get to the airport. However, our excitement was a good substitute for our fatigue, and the girls were in good spirits.

We landed at LAX, piled into the rental car, and drove to San Clemente. Over twenty years ago, my good friend Pegge showed me this beautiful pier with this excellent Fisherman’s restaurant with an adjoining bar serving fantastic seafood. I’ve shown it to my friends, sister, and brother-in-law, and I showed it to my kids during our 2017 trip.

We are an amazing lunch of fisherman’s chowder, steamed mussels, calamari, oysters on the half shell, and sourdough bread. I love that the girls are so willing to try new things.

After our filling lunch, we walked up and down the pier, then spent the early afternoon playing in the ocean.

We left San Clemente and stopped at Trader Joe’s to get our breakfast and lunch foods, then rolled into Anaheim, checked into our hotel, returned the rental car, and laid low for the night. The silver lining of being beyond tired from the early morning was that it made an early bedtime easy. We set the alarm for 6:30 a.m. and were out before 8:30 p.m., ready to tackle Disneyland in the morning.

Extra pictures from our day are below: