When travelers arrive in San Diego they see a beautiful coastal city with contemporary architecture and palm trees. The downtown area has a business district, many restaurants and cafes, museums, and shopping opportunities. Mountains and desert are on one side of the metropolis and the Pacific Ocean is on the other side. Here in Southern California the weather is mild. Cool mornings with fog give way to balmy afternoons with occasional rainfall. The region is a popular place to live and a getaway destination because of the near-perfect weather and the city itself with all it has to offer.

4 Best Places to Visit:

Balboa Park – No trip to San Diego is truly complete without a visit to this lovely and vast public park, a complex campus of gardens, playgrounds, grassy open areas, museums and a clock tower. The attractive buildings are all done in Neo-classical Spanish style architecture. Many public events happen in this park in the evenings and on the weekends. The famous San Diego Zoo is in Balboa Park as well.

La Jolla – On the north side of town beside the sea, La Jolla is a high-end community with expensive homes, boutique shops, and intimate cafes. The area is also a wonderful place to explore the coastline with coves, rock formations, and cliffs banking the ocean. The Birch Aquarium located here has pretty fish and a large kelp tank. Then, man-made Children’s Beach is home to a colony of harbor seals and many people visit to observe the seals.

Old Town – The authentic town begun centuries ago is San Diego’s historic district. A great place for a day trip, the town has curio and boutique shops, restaurants and cafes, museums, canons dating back to the 1800s, and historic homes. People perform as historic figures and give in-character presentations telling about the start of the city long ago.

San Diego Zoo and Safari Park – Possibly the country’s top zoo, the San Diego Zoo spans over 100 acres of land with natural animal habitats and exhibits. At least, an entire day is needed to see the zoo. Many animal programs and shows take place. The zoo has rare animals found in no other zoo in the world. The Safari Park spans some 1800 acres of naturalized land in San Pascal Valley of the north-eastern part of the city. Visitors motor through and watch free-roaming animals.