Happy Valentine’s Day everyone 🙂 I hope you are celebrating with your loved ones!
I haven’t written in a long time so I have a lot of catching up to do but I first wanted to write about a trip I took to Julian for Valentine’s Day.
If you don’t know Julian, it is a small miner’s town about an hour outside of San Diego. During the 1800s, a lot of people moved here for the gold mining rush! Of course, they don’t use the mines nowadays and is more famous for the apples.
public parking space but it was $3 an hour. So if you want free parking, come early. For us, that was arriving before 10am.
The town is really cute with lots of historic buildings. The shops and restaurants all have some history to them. And because they are a town known for apples, they have lots of apple related items, such as apple scented candles and bath bombs to apple butter and jams.
My favorite store was The Warm Hearth (address: 2125 Main St.) because it had everything. From cooking items to vintage signages, it was really an all-in-one shop. I really enjoyed looking through all the vintage signs, playing giant size games, looking at backyard water features, and more.
I loved that everything was within walking distance of each other and since this is off-season (not apple picking season), it didn’t feel like it was too crowded. Some of the apple pie restaurants had some lines but it wasn’t too bad. Also, every time I walked by the pie places, the smell of fresh apple pie was just mouth-watering.
For lunch, we went to the Miner’s Diner, which was just across the street from the shop. The shop feels like an old diner and I loved it. It has character 🙂 At the entrance of the shop, the old miner greets you, waving his axe and drinking his soda.
They have several sandwich and burger options and you can also split an order. We ended up getting a split Reuben because we were going to get something to eat later as well. As we were dining, the toy train moved around the restaurant, just choo-chooing away.
There was another cute candy shop inside the Miner’s Diner. It is small but very cute and there is a small metal miner, ready to detonate dynamite in the mines. How cute!
There were also museums and old mines you can visit to learn more about how the city started and to see how people lived during the time. Most of them had small fees but if you are a historic buff, I think these places would give you a lot of insights.
After walking around the town, visited the Julian Tea & Cottage Arts for their Valentine’s Day Tea event. This place was fantastic! If you are a tea lover, you need to visit this place. The store itself is pretty small but it has indoor and outdoor seating and has lots of different things they offer.
We were here for their Valentine’s Day Tea party and it was really good! It was a special set menu that had some romantic flair. A four-course (almost) meal starting off with soup (Tomato or Pumpkin) and a variety of finger sandwiches, followed by some scones with different jam, and lastly a dessert plate.
And they have a list of tea you can pick for your drink and you can switch out to tea at any time. It was an experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat! If you would like to see their future events, visit their webpage (https://juliantea.com/)
Before leaving Julian, we had a final stop. We needed to get apple pie. There are several ones to pick from but we ended up going to Mom’s. They had several different pies but I wanted to focus on the main one, the apple pie. Also, you can get your crust in 2 ways: Flakey or in crumbs. I wanted the most basic one for my first trip, so a flakey apple pie.
I brought it home and ate it but you can freeze them and the box has instructions on how to reheat them. Overall, excellent pie. I loved the buttery crust!
Julian is definitely worth a trip. You can do a day trip or if you want to hike around the area, an overnight trip would also work.
Moons on the Move 