My baby sister, Samantha, turned 18 last Wednesday and to celebrate she came out to sunny San Diego to visit me. So what do I do her first day here? Take her to be tortured. *insert evil face here* In reality, she’s the one who chose to be tortured as she wanted to spend her 18th birthday getting her first tattoo. Since I haven’t been tattooed in San Diego, I had to do a little research to find a place to go. Ultimately, I chose American Tattoo, just up the road from Miramar. There, we met Dustin, who created a really nice butterfly design for her. Unfortunately for him, Samantha didn’t realize just how painful getting tattooed can be. She’s been with me for a few of mine, but it’s just not the same as having it done. So there were a few tears at first, but she quickly braved up and suffered through it, even managing a big smile when it was all done.

Since she had never been to San Diego before, we wanted to make sure she saw some of the awesome things San Diego has to offer. This is how we ended up at the San Diego Zoo on Thursday. Because, really, you can’t come to San Diego on vacation and not see the panda bears. Even better, it was a perfect day out, so we could cruise to the zoo in the Porsche.

Friday was more of a laid back day. Andy and I had stuff to take care of in the morning, so we didn’t even head out to sightsee until mid-afternoon, but that didn’t stop us from making the most of the day by driving up the Coast Highway to Oceanside to wander the pier before grabbing chinese food. We even saw a pelican on the pier, which was supercool as I’d never seen one before.

With Saturday being Samantha’s last full day in California, we met up with our friend Charles and headed to Sea World. Since Samantha and I had never been to Sea World, Charles offered to show us around. Apparently, it’s his favorite place on Earth and he knows his way around the park pretty well. This was good as it meant we were able to catch the Shamu show right away and wander before making it to the dolphin show. Both were pretty awesome and I’m pretty jealous of the trainers and kinda wish I could swim so I could be one We also hit up a couple of the petting areas, where we got to pet a dolphin, a stingray and a Patrick (aka a starfish). We also saw whales, polar bears, penguins and bunches of other fun sea life. Oh, and the Budweiser clydesdales that are housed at the park.

All in all, it was awesome to have Samantha in town for the week and we had a great time seeing some of the sights of San Diego. As of this writing, she’s finally home and sleeping off the jet lag, but before she left I stole all her photos to post them up here.