Travel: Mini Carlsbad Trip

At the end of May we decided to take a quick trip north and see what Northern San Diego County has to offer. Josh and I took a mini two day trip where we visited Carlsbad the first day and Encinitas the second day (post to come soon).

We have heard lots of good things and places to see in Carlsbad. It is about a 40 minute or so drive from Downtown San Diego. Whenever Josh and I visit somewhere for the first time we become really bad at planning what we want to do, just some loose ideas. We usually don’t do too much research into the city and just wander around. This can be a great way to discover a new city, but it does have it downfalls. When we went to Palm Springs last year we discovered all the great things on the last day we were there. However, Carlsbad is a pretty small town so we enjoyed just walking about looking at all the shops and had some great food.

We spent pretty much all of our time near the downtown area. The first thing we did was find some great coffee, a must in our household. We stumbled on this little roasting place just a few blocks from Carlsbad village, Steady State Roasters. Oh man was this some great coffee!! We love their little shop. It is more of a art community with a coffee shop in the middle. On one side there is a woodworking shop, the other small studios, and a little flower shop outside. The art school kids inside of us were ecstatic.

After we got some coffee we wandered around, found a beach and a record store. Josh always has trouble walking out of a record store without getting some new albums, so we ended up picking up a couple new ones. Anybody recognize what he’s holding in the picture above?!

There were a ton of cute little restaurants and shops in Carlsbad Village, all just a couple blocks from multiple beaches. This weekend that we went happened to be pretty overcast, so while we did spent a decent amount of time walking the beach, we didn’t get in the water.

After walking around all morning, we worked up an appetite and ended up getting sushi  and poke from this little hole in the wall place called Yoshino’s. It’d be pretty easy to miss this minimalist Japanese deli, but it’d also be a shame to pass it by. The sushi is prepared regularly throughout the day, and while they don’t offer a lot of variety (everything is prepared based on what was best at the market that morning), all of the seafood is super fresh. Seriously guys, this place is no frills sushi at its finest.

Afterwards, we hit up back to back bars for to get some pints. The first was a brand new place that actually specializes in wine and small plates, but has a small, yet solid draft selection. Oak + Elixir has only been open for a few weeks, but we can already tell this place is going to do magic in the future. We also hit up Pizza Port Carlsbad, and loved it so much that we got pizza for dinner there later that night.

With full bellies and sore feet from walking all day, we eventually settled at our Air BnB down in Encinatas, which is where we spent the next day of our trip. We’ll cover that one in our next post. Have any of you guys checked out Carlsbad? What hidden gems did we miss?!