Solana Beach: beautiful view & fine gift shops

Today, we went to another famous coastal city in San Diego, the Solana Beach. We thought that today might be a nice day to go down there and have lunch. According to Wikipedia, Solana Beach is an affluent city in San Diego County, California. When we first arrived Solana Beach at about 10 o'clock, the weather was really foggy, and the sky was dark, there were only few people on the beach, and one person was surfing. To get to the actual beach, we have to walk through a park, so we decided to let Elisa play in the park. Karen, boys, and me walked down to the beach, it was a bit cold, and since the weather was foggy, we couldn't really look far from the beach. Karen told me that if the weather is nice, we will be able to see through all Southern California beaches, including the one we visited before, La Jolla beach. Elisa and Jason then came down to the beach with us, we took some pictures, and decided to head to the restaurant to have lunch. By the time we leave, the weather started to turn nice... well, it seems we doesn't have good luck today...

Solana Beach

We are going on a trip on our favorite rocket ship, zooming through the sky Little Einsteins!

Almost arrived

Railroad track

Solana Beach! Unfortunately, the weather was not very good...

Surfboarders

Classic California Style

Me!

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People holding big surfboards

The park

Before we have lunch, we walked through some small stores and gift shops. One of them is a really nice flower shop called Cedros Gardens, there are all kinds of plants and decorations in this shop, both Karen and me love this shop so much. We had lunch at Cedros cafe, it is a small cafe across the street and the railroad track. Since we got there at about 11:30, I just ordered a half-sandwich with soup as a "brunch". One thing I loves about this cafe restaurant is, they use iPad to checkout, this is my first time seeing this , and just like Apple's commercial, it is really convenient. About their food, the sandwich was not too special, but their tomato soup was really good!

Cedros Gardens

Cedros Cafe

iPad checkout system, Square (the app).

Signing on iPad!

My sandwich and soup. The soup was really good.

After lunch, we went to a huge gift shop right next to Cedros cafe. I can't believe how big this gift shop is, it is a 2-stories gift shop, sells all kind of fine stuff, from retro toys to arts, I love them all. We spent at least a hour just looking around the shop, but I definitely enjoy it. Something I found that I really love was the vintage metal posters, they have very nice retro designs of America's cities such as NYC and Chicago. Their price are not bad as well, the 12 inches ones are 16 dollars, but I didn't buy it after all, because I actually want to buy one with San Diego design, I decided to buy it online. (Well, I found out that they are all much more expensive online, so I have to buy it next time when I visit gift shops...) The only thing I bought in this gift shop was a nice wood postcard.

The last shop we visit was a shop all selling old-fashioned stuffs, this shop is different from the others since the goods they are selling are "real", not re-made retro goods. Of course, these old toys can bring up people's memory, but their price are not low at the same time. Something that most attracted my attention in this shop might be those old magazines, they are all at least 50 years old! How nice!