the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

I planned this trip sometime later in 2024 – I saw that Gabor Maté, a retired physician and trauma/addiction/illness/child development expert, was going to be in California ! I’ve been following him for a while and really wanted to see him talk, so Jacob and I booked tickets for a weekend in San Diego !

On our way to San Diego and arriving at the airport Thursday night:

We arrived pretty late to our AirBnb – we arrived there a little bit before midnight, so it was dark already but thankfully, that also meant no traffic ! Here are some photos of the AirBnb I got on our last day. It was a whimsical house with lots of personality, endearingly named “Mosaic Casita”, and all of the mosaic artwork was apparently made by the mother’s host ! My germaphobe self did not appreciate much of the gross things I found such as stains on towels and blankets sheets, plus mugs with dirt and dust on them (plus the host was up pretty late some nights)… but, it was a cozy and safe place to stay and a nice refuge. I think I would just book a different AirBnb if I were to come to San Diego again:

For Friday, Jacob still had to work so he chilled at the AirBnb most of the day. I went out to see Gabor Maté at the Wyndham hotel near the harbor (ft. my breakfast… I also sat not very close to the stage, hence my blurry photo of the doctor):

The day conference was from 10 am to 3pm, with a 1-hour break from 12 to 1pm. During that break, I stopped by another coffee shop to get a matcha drink plus a snack:

As someone who’s listened to so many of Gabor Maté’s podcasts, I feel like I already heard about 75% of the things he’s shared before. However, I ended up taking 2 pages of notes still, and I think I will reflect on them here sometime. It was really cool that there were Q&A sessions since those are fresh questions that I would be able to see Gabor respond to. I also have heard that he comes off arrogant and I definitely saw that for the first time today. Overall, though he is definitely not perfect but I still very much appreciate his expertise and stance on things.

After the conference, I got our rental car and drove back to the AirBnb. Around 5:45 pm, we headed out to Funner where we reserved a table at one of Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchens ! It was definitely Michelin-star level and so yummy. The service was top notch, the food was so delicious and quick to be served, and it felt like an experience where Jacob and I could really pamper ourselves. I got a crispy salmon skin dish that had a buttery but not gross texture to it with the most amazing asparagus side dish I’ve ever tasted and Jacob ordered a ribeye dish that he really enjoyed. For dessert I ordered this coconut sorbet while Jacob ordered this chocolate sincake. However, the server accidentally gave him a sticky toffee pudding cake on accident so we ended up just getting that on the house. I also had the first black coffee that I really liked (no cream, no sugar!). When I ordered hot water, they also gave these really fancy small honey jars with slices of lemon. I took one of the honey jars home :

For Saturday, (full) Day 2 of our socal trip, we started the day off by heading to a local diner for breakfast. The food was okay. The service was really the best part. However, when I ordered coffee, the mug and the spoon they gave me were all covered in dust so that was gross. I got some nice photos of the place, along with the food, but I will probably just give them a 3 star rating on Yelp later:

I did not take anymore photos for the rest of the day as we headed up to Bellflower to visit family ! It was about an hour and a half there, and thankfully we did not have to head into crazy LA traffic. It was fun hanging out with Jacob’s brother and his wife, along with their five kids !

On our last day, we checked out of our AirBnB and headed to a coffee shop to wait out the rain. I got a pretty yummy breakfast sandwich:

For the rest of the day, we primarily hung around Balboa park ! We first checked out the really cool international village, where each cottage was a different country (a lot of them also had some small sweets):

We then passed by a giant outdoor organ and they happened to be giving a live concert then ! So we stayed and listened to a few songs. I also appreciated how the organist shared a bit about the makeup of the organ, like how there were about 5,000 pipes with the longest pipe being 32 feet long, for example:

Our next stop was the botanic gardens and the Lily pond !

And the rest of my photos in the park:

And those are all of my San Diego photos – thanks for reading !