Our Stay at San Diego’s Historic Hotel Del Coronado
The second lodging stop on our San Diego destination tour is the world famous Hotel Del Coronado on renowned Coronado Island, in San Diego, California.
This 1880s Victorian National Landmark Hotel has been wowing movie stars, presidents, royalty, and even The Roaming Boomers for over 120 years.
Countless books and movies have been centered here, and evidently this hotel even has its own resident ghost, Kate Morgan, who checked into the hotel in 1892 and never checked out.
As we finished making our video about the resort, we happened upon the housekeeping manager and she confirmed a great many odd happenings around the resort all of which she contributes to the ghost of Kate Morgan.
The Hotel Del Coronado is a AAA Four-Diamond property, and has many other enviable industry awards and acknowledgments under its belt, not the least of which is its inclusion into the National Historic Registry, and even more recently “Dr. Beach” hails the Del Coronado’s beach one of the 10 best in the whole United States.
We absolutely love the feel of historic properties, and you can count on us to visit as many of the good ones as possible.
When we arrived at Del Coronado, they were expecting us and gave us a real VIP welcome at the front desk, including a wonderful assortment of cheese’s delivered to our room.
When staying at a historic resort of this age, the discriminating traveler must align their expectations of a room that was built over 120 years ago, and realize that your lodging isn’t going to be like a Four Seasons that we recently stayed at.
Our room was generous in size, the appointments were nice, and we enjoyed a partial view of the ocean. Unfortunately, someone wasn’t paying attention, and they put us in a handicapped room. I suppose this isn’t the greatest of first impressions to make with a travel writer. They quickly offered to move us, but we already had our luggage unpacked, and besides there evidently weren’t any more ocean-view rooms available.
C’est la vie!
For dinner the Hotel Del Coronado hosted us at 1500 Ocean, their fine dining restaurant. I started out with Hiramasa Crudo (raw yellowtail, kishu mandarins, serrano, cilantro, tangerine oil), while Carol opted for an Artisan Goat Cheese Tasting (grape leaf wrapped sally jackson roasted beets and shaved etude chevre souffle). Both were wonderful!
For our main courses, Carol went with Duroc Pork Tenderloin (soft polenta, maitake, fava bean, red wine jus), while I opted for Halibut Confit (fingerlings, chanterelles, spinach, truffle aioli). Once again, outstanding, and the ocean-view sunset wasn’t so bad either!
As is often the case, the chef would not let us out of the restaurant without at least tasting one of their desert creations. Therefore, with reluctant glee (is there such a thing?), we sampled a trio of house-made ice creams that were of course out of this world! YUM!
The next morning, with happily no ghost stories to relate, we made a beeline for the gym in a vain effort to work off some of the calories from the past few nights.
After our workout, we headed for the famous Del Coronado beach to explore, lounge, and soak in the Southern California sunshine. One of the treats, for me anyway, was the occasional parade of naval aircraft that would buzz over the beach from the nearby navel base. We saw helicopters, small planes, large planes, and even some cool jets. Unfortunately, I never had my camera in hand when there was a jet flying overhead.
Overall, we had a most wonderful stay at the Hotel Del Coronado. If you can afford it, I would spring for one of the full ocean-view junior suites.
We asked to see a selection of rooms during our stay, and the white wicker rocking chairs, sitting on their own private ocean-view deck, in the ocean-view junior suites were definitely calling my name. Unfortunately there were none available.
The Hotel Del Coronado is definitely on our “let’s do that again” list.
Great review of a hotel that we stay at 3 and 4 times per year. You definitely need to experience their Sunday brunch in the Crown Room and having a full ocean front room changes the entire visit, for the better! We have been going to the Del for the past 24 years and have never had a ghost experience. I'm very happy about that!
Audra,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your Del Coronado stories! We definitely want to get back, and stay in an ocean-view junior suite.