Old Town San Diego Family Fun

Looking for a fun family vacation destination in Southern California?

Old Town San Diego is one of our absolute favorite places to travel with our kids. We’ve been several times and never get tired of exploring, eating good food, and being in short driving distance to other San Diego attractions.

During this stay we stayed in the Best Western PLUS Hacienda Hotel. This was actually my first time staying in this hotel. I always see it up in the hill above Old Town and have wanted to stay and it didn’t disappoint.

We had an amazing view of Old Town and were in walking distance to Old Town restaurants and shops, which was very convenient, especially since we were traveling with a toddler.

(This post is written in partnership with Visit San Diego. We received media passes that allowed us to visit The Whaley House during our visit.) 

Old Town San Diego Family Fun

One of my favorite things about Old Town is the amazing Mexican food. The tortillas at the Cafe Coyote are enough to make me want to keep coming back for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I think we did end up eating there a majority of the time during our visit.

It is a great atmosphere with mariachi players, lights hanging from the ceiling, and ladies making fresh tortillas right in front of you.

Juliana loved the tortillas and stealing her grandma’s glasses during dinner. Isn’t eating out with a toddler always an adventure in its own!?

The Whaley House Museum

Whenever we stay in Old Town we try to visit the Whaley House. It’s a fun historical house that is supposedly one of the most haunted places in San Diego.

Right before going to LEGOLAND we took a walk through the Whaley House.

Jonas gets a big kick out of the fact that it could be haunted. He loved exploring the different rooms in the house. You can tour the house on your own during the day and they do have guided ghost tours at night.

Here he is in the Whaley House Court Room!

The Whaley House also has a very cool theatre room! I thought it was so interesting how the floor to the stage was slanted up. I guess it was to get a better perspective of whatever play they had showing.

Now for the spooky part.

When I got home and started going through my photo’s from our trip I noticed that there were some green orbs in some of the photo’s from the dining room, which was weird to me since I didn’t use a flash in the photo’s.

You can see one here next to Juliana’s foot. Was it a Whaley House ghost? Let me know what you think in the comments! ;)

Old Town Celebrations

If you go to the historic park in Old Town they are always having celebrations. I would check the Old Town event calendar before you plan your trip to see when they will be having their next event.

While we were there they had horse demonstrations. There were ladies riding the horses in period dresses. They were so beautiful and Juliana had so much fun watching and making “neigh” noises.

The Mormon Battalion Museum

Right behind our hotel was the Mormon Battalion Museum. It looked really neat and they offer free tours all day so we took one right before our drive home.

For a free tour this is really worth a visit. They take you through the story of the Mormon Battalion in period costume and have really neat themed rooms.

Jonas got to dress up in a Battalion uniform, which ended up being one of the highlights of our trip for him.

After the tour they took a free souvenir old fashioned photo of us and Jonas got to go outside and pan for gold. They even let him keep two of the pieces he found.

After all of that I realized I didn’t take any photo’s of myself. I was behind the camera a lot!

It was the most wonderful trip and I can’t wait to take the family back soon. We might even have to go this month, it’s kids FREE month in San Diego the whole month of October!

Have you been to Old Town San Diego? What is your favorite thing to do with family there?

What would you most like to see in Old Town? I would love to hear from you in the comments below!