Set along a huge Pacific Ocean harbor at the southwestern corner of the country just a few miles from the Mexican border, San Diego embodies the Southern California ideal. Around the turn of the 20th century, it rivaled Los Angeles as a boomtown based on wild real estate speculation, but while L.A. continued to expand by leaps and bounds, San Diego grew comparatively slowly. Instead of Hollywood glamour, San Diego’s economy has long been based around the U.S. Navy, as evidenced by the massive former USS Midway moored right downtown. (San Diego successfully mixed its military and Hollywood influences in the movie Top Gun.) Despite a metropolitan population of nearly 3 million people, San Diego still feels small and anything but urban.
The main things to see in San Diego are in Balboa Park, a lushly landscaped 1,150-acre spread on downtown’s northwest edge, which was laid out and constructed as part of the 1915 International Exposition celebrating the completion of the Panama Canal. The many grand buildings, all built in gorgeous Spanish Revival style by architect Bertram Goodhue, have been preserved in marvelous condition, and now house sundry museums, ranging from automobiles to fine art to a functioning replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
Balboa Park is also home to the San Diego Zoo (daily; $20-32; 619/234-3153), one of the largest and most popular in the world. With over 4,000 animals kept in settings that simulate their natural habitats, you can see koalas and komodo dragons, panda bears and polar bears, plus gorillas, giraffes—you name it, if it’s anywhere outside in the wild, it’ll be here amidst the zoo’s lushly landscaped 100 acres. Sports fans may be interested to know that the San Diego Padres (619/795-5000) play at retro-modern Petco Park downtown.
