Living in San Diego, California

When you say San Diego, I bet the first thing that comes in your mind are its beautiful beaches but, there's so much more to this city.

It's true, San Diego has several beaches, each very different from the other and all worthy of visiting but what makes it so interesting is the diversity in population and cultures, vegetation and even climate - all it takes is just a twenty-minute drive East or West (depending on where you find yourself) and you'll see what I'm talking about.

I mentioned how diverse San Diego is and if you haven't visited already, you should at least once in your life.

There's a long list of things to do here and I will share them with you in several posts. I started putting them all in this one and it simply ended up being way too long so I had to divide it into several posts. I will be sharing with you over several weeks what to do by the beach, what to do inland, me and my hubby's favorite places to eat and whatever else I am forgetting at this moment. If you have any specific questions, please ask me and I will do my best to answer them. I want to be real with you here and create the right expectations, so I will be telling you about this gorgeous city as I know it.

I thought of starting with general San Diego living so you know what to expect when you get here.
Me and hubby have been lucky to call San Diego our home for four years now, and while there are plenty of downsides (for example, the city is getting more and more congested traffic and population-wise and it's getting very expensive when it comes to housing), there are a lot of ups as well, which made us want to stick around for a while.

First, I really like the climate, which is... very interesting. We can't complain, the weather here is better than anywhere else, in my opinion, and we try to enjoy it as much as we can.

The first year, when we moved here, we pretty much had perfect weather - not too cold, not too hot, and we were thrilled. We were confused though because we would constantly hear the weather-people talk about the weather, like every 15 minutes or so during the news hour. Me and hubby kept laughing at them, saying that the weather here is literally the same every single day, so why talk so much about it? After being here for several years now, we get it. Here's why.

We don't really have seasons, per se. Winter is cooler to cold at times, it usually being the rainy season. However, due to the drought California has been experiencing for years, no winter is the same. The last one (2017) has been very rainy - something quite shocking for us. It was mostly raining during the weekends and it made us very unhappy since we're not used to being indoors much. Plus, one very important thing to mention is, Californians don't know how to drive in the rain and some are quite terrified of doing that, which causes a lot of accidents. You can say that rain in San Diego puts a stop to life, to some extent. Plus, we found out later in the year that getting that much rain here isn't necessarily a good thing.

Rain leads to more vegetation, which in turn, leads to horrid fires once the heat kicks in and all that greenery starts to dry out. The rest of the year, however, it's abnormal to experience rain.

This winter (2018), has been once again, very different. It has been so warm for the most part that we forgot what time of the year it was - until mid-February that is. It got really cold really fast and it lasted, which was another shock for us. Being used to and spoiled by the warm weather, we didn't know what to do with ourselves in the cold days. We're still experiencing the cooler weather and we've been getting some rain but we're hoping that spring will finally show up in the next days *fingers crossed*.

Spring is a very short-lived season but it's beautiful. Don't expect the same kind of spring you'd experience in New York, for example, but it's all the same beautiful (that is especially if we get rain during winter). Last spring was breathtaking. This year, so far, spring is non-existent.

It usually starts warming up really fast in March-April, while May and June are strange, to say the least. So you understand - we have names for the phenomenon happening here during these months - May-Gray and June-Gloom. Why? These months are usually dark and cloudy, and even foggy, especially at the coast. I can't tell you how many times we left our house, with sunny warm weather, heading towards the beach to find a very dark, cloudy "look" all around. So if you plan on visiting San Diego during those months, know what to expect.

Last May we had less sunny days than the famous grey Seattle, which is crazy considering we call this city "Sunny San Diego". However, all this usually clears in July and that's when we say summer is in full swing here. And boy does summer start.

August gets really hot, and occasionally humid and the only place to be at during this time is the beaches (they get very crowded so make sure you arrive early or you risk not finding any parking).

Fall doesn't usually come until mid-November and even December. It took us some getting used to having Christmas look like fall, but we'll take it.

So that's about the climate of San Diego. Every year has been different so we're not sure what to expect anymore. One thing is certain, according to the news, San Diego is the city where most people move to, which explains the rapid traffic growth we've been seeing over the years.

Will San Diego be our forever home - not very likely (it’s expensive), so we are trying to enjoy this city as much as we can while we live in it.

Stay tuned in the next weeks for the posts where I tell you about the things you can do in our beautiful SD.