We can’t do anything about the traffic. Set your GPS for “south,” play your favorite podcast, and just tell yourself you’re literally going to a better place.
But in just a few hours, (well, you did say you wanted to “get away”) the Pacific appears, sparkling on your right as you move south on the 5, planes zoom off over your head from San Diego International, and before you know it, you’re poolside.
We visited The Hyatt Regency Mission Bay Spa and Marina over Super Bowl weekend, and it reminded us of why we like San Diego so much, and what a splendid job Hyatts do at entertaining guests.
We were perched on the 17th floor, high above the resort’s three pools, spa, and curving water slides, looking directly west out at San Diego’s Mission and Bonita Bays, alongside Quivira Point. Mission Bay Park sits just to the north, with its roller coasters and scores of ways to spin you in a circle.
Though it was the weekend, the swimming pools were rarely crowded, though it takes only a few little ones to raise the volume level. Hyatts are family-friendly properties, with a number of young families in attendance.
Adult amenities, however, include a fitness center, the Blue Marble Spa, and the Red Marlin Restaurant. More on that in a bit.
The rooms at Mission Bay are large, quiet, and comfortable, with a fistful of USB charging slots, and a flat-screen TV as wide as a bay window. The beds are true to my former hotel experiences—I sleep like a guilty man in hotel beds, and these were no exception.
A Starbucks on the hotel property and a coffee machine in the room presented the kind of dilemma the world should have more of. I will say, though, making your own coffee, and sitting out on the high terrace in the bright morning sun looking across the Pacific to the Hawaiian Islands a couple of thousand miles away, is something I could get used to.
Logistical difficulties (let’s leave that there) made it unable to enjoy our dinner at the swanky, bayside Red Marlin, but the restaurant staff, and our waiter, in particular, were more than happy to wrap up dinner to be enjoyed upstairs. The grilled salmon and the attendant new potatoes and asparagus spears, even in a plastic container, were easily the best thing I’d enjoyed in weeks. Proper china and flatware would only have been more than I deserved.
As morning broke, somewhere just past Santa Barbara Cove on Sunday, I counted my blessings until I ran out of fingers. The machine coffee was hot and delicious, there was not a cloud in the blue sky, and when asked, the front desk was only too happy to provide a late check out.
May all your checkouts be late.
The 411:
Hyatt Regency Mission Bay Spa and Marina, 1441 Quivira Road, San Diego, CA. 92109. (619) 224-1234.
