italian food — Cuban-American Lifestyle & Food Blog — My Big Fat Cuban Family: A Cuban-American Blog

Every year we look forward to our week down in the beach town of Del Mar, California. It's about an hour south of where we live.

What a difference that hour south makes.

We've been coming here to this same beach house in Del Mar for the past 4 years and it always manages to feel both fresh and familiar. Unpacking and cooking is easy. I know my way around this kitchen just like I know my own.

Part of vacationing for me is attempting to un-plug from social media. This is HARD. (I said, attempting, okay? I know my limits.) So, I do it in baby-steps. I start by limiting my reading-what-everyone-else-is-doing-right-this-minute on Facebook.

And I only post photos on Instagram. Also, because I work on Project Life all year, sharing on Instagram helps me remember and organize where we were and what we were up to on certain days, but that's not important right now.

Vacation. (On Instagram.)

The first thing we do when we get here is... drop everything. ("You can unpack later!") We head down to the beach immediately (It's exactly 238 steps from our front door) to get sand in our toes and feel the breeze in our hair.

Some days we make a big, fat, bacon-and-eggs-with-all-the-trimmings breakfast. Other days, there's cereal-that-reminds-them-of-childhood and coffee. Either way, it's all good. We're on vacation.

Our first day here, the kids asked, "Can we just order a pizza from the beach for lunch?"

Answer: "Of course. We're on vacation."

Eric unwinds best when he surfs, so the first thing he did was wax down his board. There's something to be said for a happy husband. He's obviously on vacation.

We're usually here on the week that we celebrate our wedding anniversary and Lucy's birthday. Our tradition has been to go to Little Italy in San Diego to our favorite Italian restaurant called Filippi's Pizza Grotto.

Lucy was in LA for the summer, so we bumped our vacation to this week. But that's not stopping us from celebrating. It just means our celebration has been postponed.

Little Italy is all kinds of charming. You have to wait in line inside the Italian market to get to the restaurant in the back.

Our theme for the dinner was "Red Food." (I cracked my self up right there. Can you tell I'm already relaxing?)

Eric decided to surprise us and took us to the epic Mr. A's for dessert. It was a beautiful and clear night, with the lights of downtown San Diego just below us. Quite magical.

And that was just our first day.

Most days we sit around unwinding in our own distinct ways. We spend most of them on the beach for at least part of the day. We will have friends come down and visit sometime during the week. We play lots of games and take long walks on the beach. And we build sandcastles.

Also, we are definitely getting to the Del Mar Racetrack because that's one of the things on my Summer Manifesto. Of course.

The only rule is that there are no rules. This is our one week when we've given ourselves permission to do everything or nothing. This is our week to be very deliberate in re-charging, collectively and independently.