San Diego is the one of the world's best vacation destinations. The San Diego Bay teems with life and surprises - its near-perfect weather make exploring it fun and interesting. You can take a moonlight paddle in a kayak, watch every-evening fireworks at Sea World or visit seventy miles of palm tree lined beaches to swim, surf or just chill. Following are six activities and things to do in San Diego that should not be missed on your visit.
1. Vibrant, diverse, and endlessly entertaining, the Gaslamp Quarter is where San Diego's colorful past comes alive and exists hand in hand with modern development and commerce in an active urban setting. Covering eighteen blocks of downtown San Diego, "the Gaslamp" offers dozens of specialty shops, boutiques, art galleries, hip restaurants, fun bars and avant-garde playhouses. Here you'll find an architectural mix of hip restaurants and bars inside renovated turn-of-the-century Victorian architecture. Most of the shops keep late hours, so delightful shopping, drinking, and dining can occur virtually simultaneously, making the Quarter one of San Diego's most popular travel destinations.
2. John D. and Adolph Spreckels donated the Spreckels Organ, one of the world's largest outdoor pipe organs, to the City of San Diego in 1914 for the Panama-California Exposition. This unique organ contains 4,530 pipes ranging in length from the size of a pencil to 32 feet and is housed in an ornate vaulted structure with highly embellished gables. Since 1917, San Diego has had a civic organist who performs free weekly Sunday concerts.
3. Look at Jupiter's moons through a telescope in Balboa Park as the San Diego Astronomy Association sets up many of their big telescopes by the fountain in front of the Reuben Fleet Science Center. Because there are several amateur astronomy groups and professional observatories in San Diego, this is a great opportunity for you to explore the cosmos. Held each month on the first Wednesday after dark, you'll be able to see the rings of Saturn, the planet Neptune and the craters on the moon - and understand why San Diegans consider Balboa Park the Smithsonian of the West.
4. The San Diego Natural History Museum is where you will have fun combining education with knowledge. See the huge tree in the front yard? It's a Moreton Bay fig tree that has been documented as one of the largest of this species in the state. Inside you'll find a Foucault Pendulum that gives visual proof of Earth's rotation. You can become mesmerized watching it swing back and forth, knocking over a circle of dominos with no force acting to make it change direction other than the turning of the Earth beneath it. Wow!
5. Explore the tide pools just north of Swami's Beach in Encinitas when the tide is low and see things most people never see: Hairy hermit crabs, willowy sea anemones, yawning barnacles, and perhaps even a two-spot octopus are a few of the many species that might be discovered in the nooks and crannies of tide pools. Low tides during convenient daylight hours are most common in the winter during full and new moons. San Diego travel tip: check the newspaper tide tables.
6. Sun and Fun. There are more than seventy miles of coastline here in San Diego and the best part is that every one of them are free. They are all great for swimming, surfing, jogging, body surfing, boogie-boarding, reading that mystery novel, people watching, collecting seashells or just chilling.
1. Vibrant, diverse, and endlessly entertaining, the Gaslamp Quarter is where San Diego's colorful past comes alive and exists hand in hand with modern development and commerce in an active urban setting. Covering eighteen blocks of downtown San Diego, "the Gaslamp" offers dozens of specialty shops, boutiques, art galleries, hip restaurants, fun bars and avant-garde playhouses. Here you'll find an architectural mix of hip restaurants and bars inside renovated turn-of-the-century Victorian architecture. Most of the shops keep late hours, so delightful shopping, drinking, and dining can occur virtually simultaneously, making the Quarter one of San Diego's most popular travel destinations.
2. John D. and Adolph Spreckels donated the Spreckels Organ, one of the world's largest outdoor pipe organs, to the City of San Diego in 1914 for the Panama-California Exposition. This unique organ contains 4,530 pipes ranging in length from the size of a pencil to 32 feet and is housed in an ornate vaulted structure with highly embellished gables. Since 1917, San Diego has had a civic organist who performs free weekly Sunday concerts.
3. Look at Jupiter's moons through a telescope in Balboa Park as the San Diego Astronomy Association sets up many of their big telescopes by the fountain in front of the Reuben Fleet Science Center. Because there are several amateur astronomy groups and professional observatories in San Diego, this is a great opportunity for you to explore the cosmos. Held each month on the first Wednesday after dark, you'll be able to see the rings of Saturn, the planet Neptune and the craters on the moon - and understand why San Diegans consider Balboa Park the Smithsonian of the West.
4. The San Diego Natural History Museum is where you will have fun combining education with knowledge. See the huge tree in the front yard? It's a Moreton Bay fig tree that has been documented as one of the largest of this species in the state. Inside you'll find a Foucault Pendulum that gives visual proof of Earth's rotation. You can become mesmerized watching it swing back and forth, knocking over a circle of dominos with no force acting to make it change direction other than the turning of the Earth beneath it. Wow!
5. Explore the tide pools just north of Swami's Beach in Encinitas when the tide is low and see things most people never see: Hairy hermit crabs, willowy sea anemones, yawning barnacles, and perhaps even a two-spot octopus are a few of the many species that might be discovered in the nooks and crannies of tide pools. Low tides during convenient daylight hours are most common in the winter during full and new moons. San Diego travel tip: check the newspaper tide tables.
6. Sun and Fun. There are more than seventy miles of coastline here in San Diego and the best part is that every one of them are free. They are all great for swimming, surfing, jogging, body surfing, boogie-boarding, reading that mystery novel, people watching, collecting seashells or just chilling.
About the Author:
W. Terry Hunefeld decided to quit his job 2 years ago as a CEO to follow his bliss of sailing the Pacific Ocean to census pelagic seabirds and marine mammals. Hunefeld and his wife own and operate the delightful Inn At Moonlight Beach Bed and Breakfast in the San Diego area. For more information visit: San Diego Bed and Breakfasts or Encinitas Hotels.
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