San Diego to San Francisco in 10 days
 

Help please! On Friday we ( 2 adults 2 teens) are flying into LA and have booked Fairmont Miramar for 2 nights then have a night booked at Del Coronado in San Diego followed by a few days at the Coronado Marriott and a couple more days in LA. Our original plan was to focus on San Diego and LA and not try to see everything but now I'm thinking maybe we should try to change our return flight to San Francisco and drive up the coast. Teens have never been to California. Should we stick with our original plan or try to cram it all in?

I believe it may be possible to drive up to San Francisco, but only change the itinerary if your family wants to. The weather in San Francisco has been pretty good (at least for summer, when we usually get fog).

You can also fly up to San Francisco (to Oakland Int'l airport) on Southwest (southwest.com) or JetBlue (jetblue.com) for a cheap price (one-way fares are half the price of round trip fares), or you can find some special deals on United to fly into San Francisco (but oneway fares are more expensive). San Francisco is about 1:30 away from L.A.

It will probably cost you 100 dollars to change your California-bound (and return) plane tickets.

SF is a terrific place to visit and there are tons of things to see between LA and SF. You could fly between the two cities, but the drive is a classic road trip - Santa Barbara, Cambria/Morro Bay/San Simeon, Big Sur, Monterey, Santa Cruz, etc. Spectacular scenery and plenty of interesting things to do and see along the way.

You could spend a couple days in SD, a couple in LA, then 3 on the way to SF, and a couple in SF - that would be a reasonable itinerary for 10 days, seeing a wide variety of what California has to offer without being particularly rushed.

I have never driven from San Francisco to L.A. or vice versa, but Monterey and Big Sur are very beautiful; it's worth a stop, if you are driving.

We did this a few years ago and had a great time. Started in San D. for 3 nights at the Coronado Marriott, then 1 night in Santa Barbara, then 2 nts. in Monterey and finally 3 nights in San Fran. Our kids were 16 and 18 at the time and everyone was happy. If you stay in Monterey, take them kayaking among the sea lions and otters in the bay.

Thank you all for your input. My husband and I did the drive from San Francisco to LA many years ago and it certainly is beautiful. When I called Continental it turned out that to change our departure airport from LA to San Francisco was going to cost us $1600 ($100 to change each ticket plus there were no inexpensive seats left) so it's out of the question and we will stick with our original plan, maybe driving up as far as San Simeon.

Aileen
I would look at driving your car to S.F.
and dropping it off there and getting one of those cheap one-way flights on Jet Blue or Southwest that TransitBuddie suggested. Or, at least drive to Monterrey, which has a world class aquarium and then drive back to L.A. where you will see Big Sur from the opposite direction.

Thanks that's a great idea!

I would definitely look into cheap flights from SF back to LA. Or drive up to Monterey on Hwy 1 and then take Hwy 101 back to LA. Driving hwy 101 from Monterey to LA should only take about 5 hours or so.