Downtown San Diego is alive with energy. Great restaurants, shopping and beautiful scenery.
Head to the
Embarcadero, the picturesque boardwalk along San Diego Bay. The new kid on the block here is the aircraft carrier
USS Midway, a museum of modern naval warfare. A self-guided audio tour offers a glimpse into the world of the sailors who lived aboard the carrier. Test your skills in the museum’s new flight simulators.
Farther down the bay,
Seaport Village, a quaint shopping center on the water, is the place to load up on souvenirs. Take a break for blackened fish tacos at
San Diego Pier Café, perched on stilts above the bay. Soak in the views of Coronado Bridge and boats cruising the harbor.
In the afternoon, take in
Balboa Park, the largest urban cultural park in the U.S. Spanish-Renaissance architecture reflects the park’s stint as host of the Panama-California Exposition from 1915–1916. Get your gallery fix here—the park holds 12 major museums.
Sports fans will love the
Hall of Champions, a Balboa museum dedicated to San Diego’s many sports heroes, from slugger Ted Williams to skateboard icon Tony Hawk. But don’t dawdle. You’ll want to catch the spectacular sunset from
Altitude Skybar and Garden Lounge, the restaurant on top of the San Diego Marriott Gaslamp Quarter.
Hunker down for the evening in the Gaslamp. The
Quarter includes block after block of sushi bars, steak houses and lively nightclubs, many modeled in the Victorian style. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Gaslamp was a notorious red-light district that attracted the likes of Wyatt Earp to its saloons. Let the evening drift away while listening to jazz at
Croce’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar, a Gaslamp Quarter institution.
This article has been adapted from the original, which was published by MSP Communications.