Whales & A Gorgeous Sunset

To start Wednesday's vacation adventures, we met my parents and went to breakfast at Broken Yolk Cafe. BYC was featured on an episode of Man Vs. Food. There is a Broken Yolk Iron Man / Iron Woman Special challenge. It's a dozen egg omelet filled with mushrooms, onions, and American cheese, smothered with chili and more cheese, served on a 15 inch pizza pan with a generous pile of home fries and two biscuits. It's for one person and that person has an hour to finish all the food. I can't remember if Adam won the challenge or not, but I am sure we'll never try to eat something that huge!

There are several BYC locations. The one in the Gaslamp is right around the corner from the Marriott, so it was a quick walk. SP ordered a cup of hot green tea and I had to laugh a bit when a huge honey bear showed up with his tea!

BYC lets you split an omelet with someone for no extra charge, and since SP and I weren't that hungry, we decided to share a No Name Omelet - bacon, avocado, tomato, and mushroom with a dollop of sour cream. Omelets come with two sides. We chose the fruit and the blueberry muffin.

Inside the omelet

 My mom got scrambled eggs, home fries, bacon, and a blueberry muffin, which she gave to me.

My dad had an omelet with mushrooms and cheese. When we went back the next morning, he ordered a waffle with strawberries:

Thursday morning SP & I shared the SBA Omelet - spinach, bacon, asparagus, and cheddar cheese.

We all enjoyed our breakfasts at BYC. It certainly beats the hotel breakfast options! Breakfast for the four of us was about $40, including tax & tip. We all enjoyed our food. My dad said it was the best omelet he has had out in quite some time. The blueberry muffin was huge and tasty. We ended up taking it with us and snacking on it during the day.

They also do take out, so for the remainder of vacation, SP went over every morning and brought back fruit, muffin, biscuit, and bacon for us to have in the hotel room while we got ready in the mornings.

After breakfast, we headed north to Carlsbad, to The Flower Fields.

Since around 1933, Frank Frazee and then his son Edward have grown ranunculus flowers and are credited with developing more vibrant colors and a distinct 'double infusion' of petals. The flower fields are only in bloom from mid-March until mid-May and since we were going to be in the area during that time frame, we decided to go. We went on the wagon ride around the fields.

Lots of beautiful colors. There also is a rose garden, poinsettia garden, an orchid greenhouse, a flower American flag, sweet pea maze - lots to see and do.

As beautiful as some of the ranunculus colors are, I loved the rose garden. So many different colors and varieties.

 Our next stop was Mission San Luis Rey.

We've never been to a mission before. We toured the museum, saw the gardens, walked through the cemetery, went into the church. It was very interesting and I'm really glad my mom saw this in one of her guide books.

After the mission, we drove down the coast a bit, stopped in Oceanside, tasted some truly awful wine at a wine tasting room, drove a bit more down the coast, and stopped at a scenic overlook where we sat and gazed at the ocean and surfers for a while.

Then it was on to dinner. My mom wanted to try Chart House. It's in Cardiff. We were early for our reservation, so we sat in the lounge and ordered cocktails:

Beer for dad and SP, cosmopolitan for mom, mango mojito for me

We shared a Happy Hour appetizer of calamari. There also was battered and fried peppers and some sweet potato chips with two dipping sauces, citrus chili and marinara. Tasty!

 Eventually we moved to our table, a wonderful, right next to the window table. Here's our view:

It's like we were right on the beach! There was a sidewalk outside the window, then the rocks, then beach, then ocean. Even better - we saw a whale! Maybe even more than one, but for the first half of our meal we were treated to a whale breaching way out in the ocean. It was great! This was easily the best view we had all vacation.

Along with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, here's what we enjoyed:

Bread basket

Appetizer: Crab, Avocado, & Mango Stack

Best of Soup: Clam Chowder, Lobster Bisque, Gazpacho

Crab Stuffed Mushrooms in a white wine sauce

Caesar Salad

Pan Seared Scallops ginger soy sauce & wasabi cream, wasabi mashed potatoes, green beans. We never noticed that orzo salad was substituted for the mashed potatoes until a manager stopped by to check on us and noted the error. Dad didn't mind, he liked the orzo, but the manager wasn't happy with the error!

For SP & mom: Seared Mahi topped with lobster & crab, served with a tomato-artichoke orzo

For me, Baked Stuffed Shrimp stuffed with crab, served with asparagus and tomato-artichoke orzo

View part way through dinner, as the sun starts to set

Dessert. Shared by everyone, the dessert special, a trio of berry cobblers. Peach, strawberry, and blueberry. 

The sun sets even more

My thoughts: Chart House is a good, not great, meal with a fantastic view. My mango mojito was fantastic. I really liked the calamari appetizer. The crab-avocado-mango appetizer was huge and delicious. The stuffed mushrooms were good, too, and the sauce delicious. I used bread to mop up the sauce. I only tried the lobster bisque, which SP said was the weakest of the soups. I thought the bisque was tasty. He liked the gazpacho best. Dad enjoyed his Caesar salad. My meal was OK. The orzo smelled kind of garlicky, so I didn't eat any, but I was so stuffed from the appetizers that I didn't care it was garlicky/I couldn't eat it because I was struggling to eat the stuffed shrimp. The crab mixture was really good, the shrimp a bit tough and overcooked. Dad thought his scallops were just OK. Mom and SP could barely finish their mahi and said it was good. The cobblers were good, my favorite was strawberry, SP liked blueberry best, and dad liked peach best. SP & I ordered hot tea, there was a nice selection of teas, and the tea was tasty.

Service was excellent. The view was amazing. Mom and dad treated us to dinner for our anniversary and also for a belated birthday meal for SP. That was very nice & generous of them, especially since this was a pretty pricey meal. Given how much I enjoyed the cocktails and appetizers and how awesome the view was, I would go back. I might make a meal of appetizers next time. But the view... it doesn't get any better.

The day ends