San Diego sits at the southwestern corner of the continental United States, against the Mexican border, and benefits from one of the most agreeable climates in the country — high 60s to mid 70s most of the year, long stretches without rain, and a Pacific that's swimmable from June through October. The city is more relaxed than Los Angeles, more compact than San Francisco, and built almost entirely around the outdoors.
Downtown is anchored by the Gaslamp Quarter, sixteen blocks of restored late-Victorian buildings full of restaurants, bars, and music venues. Along the Embarcadero, the USS Midway and the Maritime Museum sit moored side by side on the bay. Just across the water lies Coronado, with its long white-sand beach and the storied Hotel del Coronado, a Victorian beach resort that has been operating since 1888.
North of downtown, Balboa Park — 1,200 acres of Spanish-colonial pavilions from the 1915 Panama-California Exposition — contains the San Diego Zoo, a dozen museums, and the Spreckels Organ Pavilion with its free Sunday concerts. The San Diego Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum, and the Fleet Science Center all cluster around the park's central plaza.
The beach neighbourhoods run up the coast. La Jolla is the upscale one, with the protected cove at La Jolla Cove, the Birch Aquarium on the bluffs above Scripps Institution, and the Sunny Jim Sea Cave under the clifftops. Mission Beach and Pacific Beach are the surf-and-boardwalk neighbourhoods. Ocean Beach is the hippie-holdout alternative with the longest wooden pier on the West Coast. The Sunset Cliffs at the southern edge of Point Loma catch the last light of the day better than anywhere else in the city. Inland, North Park has become the creative centre — the best craft breweries, farmers market, and independent restaurants outside the tourist corridor.
The food is excellent. Fish tacos arrived from Ensenada and the border proximity keeps the standard high. The craft beer scene — 150 breweries in the county — is among the strongest in the country. South of downtown, Barrio Logan and Chicano Park under the Coronado Bridge are essential. Tijuana is twenty minutes away and worth the crossing for street tacos alone.
The oddities are numerous: the Whaley House in Old Town (the most haunted building in America, according to the television industry), the Spruce Street Suspension Bridge bouncing over a eucalyptus canyon, and Villa Montezuma — an 1887 mansion built for a spiritualist pianist who left the city without explanation two years after moving in. The Cabrillo National Monument at the tip of Point Loma marks where the first European set foot on the Pacific Coast in 1542.