San Diego is healthy fun in the sun - with lots of history, too (2024)

In the late 1800s, founding father Alonzo Erastus Horton called climate-friendly San Diego “the healthiest spot in the world.”

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That holds true in 2024, measured not just by weather, but the surrounding natural beauty of land and sea, food, culture, and mind stimulation, enhanced by accommodations and its friendly denizens.

It all helps attract Canadians — the second largest international market for the city, with 232,400 overnight visitors in 2022 spending US$123.1 million. In the last calendar year, they were part of 30 million people who laid down a record US$14 billion or 10% of all of California’s tourism.

A HOME RUN AT PENDRY SAN DIEGO

With temperatures a consistent balmy 10C-22C, it must take a special hotel vibe to have guests want to linger on the premises.

That’s the 12-storey boutique Pendry San Diego, a favourite of the Gaslamp Quarter since welcoming its first guests seven years ago. Close enough to hear the cheers at Petco Park for the Padres, it’s part of Alan Fuerstman’s California-based Montage Residences that utilize smaller footprints in city centres.

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It’s 317 rooms, including 36 suites, feature broad windows, the Bay Side to view cruise ships and U.S. Navy vessels sweep into the harbour under the Coronado Bridge, while Skyline rooms overlook gas lights restored from the 1880s. Horton designed this part of San Diego with no alleys, believing they led trash to piling up and hid illicit activities.

Six dining/drinking options on the property start with breakfast at Provisional Kitchen, a restaurant-marketplace with espresso bar, bistro and greenhouse to buy curated ceramics, apothecary items and pantry staples. Choose a reasonably priced Mexican or American breakfast or go big and reserve a $135 ostrich egg meal that serves three to four, sunny side up with pesto potatoes, bacon and roasted red salsa.

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Lionfish is the perfect blend of modern California coastal, steak, sushi and seafood on both appetizer and main course menus, many dishes San Diego-inspired.

Nason’s Beer Hall blends easily with neighbourhood sports pubs packed for a Padres game in the Gaslamp. Petco has an outdoor playground for kids and plenty of adult diversions in its themed bars. Back at Pendry San Diego, for co*cktails in more plush settings, Fifth & Rose and The Oxford Social Club are both on site.

In need of an after-hours nightcap, the ChamPendry vending machines are a step above Diet co*ke in an ice bucket, dispensing Moet & Chandon brut champagne.

There’s a full-service spa with its own line of beauty products and hey, it’s California, so you can reserve 1-on-1 surf lessons, hikes or sign out complimentary acoustic guitars and skateboards at the front desk.

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WATERFRONT WALK

The water’s many attractions are a short distance from the hotel, starting at Marina Park and its flotilla of pleasure craft. Mix with young and old watching elaborate colourful kites on the green, before strolling Seaport Village’s restaurants and shops.

We had fun filling out our ‘flight card’ of 10 different tasters from the Mike Hess Brewery, leading with his signature Hop Cloud Hazy IPA, ending with a ‘4:59’, Test Pilot and an ‘OktoberHess’… Mike’s an ex-Navy officer, who took up craft brewing 15 years ago. His patio has great views of the aircraft carrier turn basin, where the USS Midway is permanently docked, and the fleet’s biggest flat tops tie up when in San Diego.

LET’S EAT!

Spoiler alert: There’s great Mexican food in San Diego, given you can see Tijuana from the balcony.

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We chose well on our first try, margaritas under the multi-coloured papel picado bunting at Coyote Cafe in Old Town, near the State Park. It’s been a 30-year favourite with locals and visitors, senoras busy on the patio folding fresh tortillas to lure passersby. Two mariachi minstrels play amid tables full of burritos, chimichangas and Old Town Carnitas, singing Cielito Lindo, all diners joining the ‘ay, ay, ay, ay’ chorus.

Just an appetizer for some inspired international cuisine:

REI DO GADO

Our booth was a long way from the pampas of southern Brazil, but the decor, delectable meats, music and convivial staff in red gaucho kerchiefs gave it a night-time campfire feel.

From the kitchen’s old-world mesquite charcoal pit, host Casio and staff served us ‘espeto corrido’ style, every few minutes presenting another juicy skewer of picanha prime cut sirloin, curried steak, veal, chicken and pork loin marinated with garlic and onions, melting as it’s sliced off the rack. Fun, but filling, and when needing a break or to recharge your Argentinian, Chilean or California wines and house-made sangria, flip your decorative table piece from green to red to stop the march of meats.

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Lunch or dinner starts with Brazilian cheese bread, made with gluten-free cassava flour from the Yucca plant. The sprawling salad bar has homemade touches such as Brazilian black bean soup and many choices for young families who frequent this Gaslight fave.

HERB AND WOOD

Count on imaginative San Diegan chefs to make Mediterranean classics taste even better with convenient year-round fresh ingredients.

I went Greek for the roasted branzino, my Italian bride backing the home team with torchio, lamb ragu and herbs. We met in the middle with some Baja shrimp. It’s the gastronomic global experience head chef Brian Malarkey envisioned for this lively space in a converted foundry. No thought of skipping dessert, accenting presentation as well as taste with ricotta hush puppies and chocolate and lemon tarte.

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ARTIFACT AT MINGEI

Until this, I’ve never thought of going to a museum for the food.

But Artifact’s menu is part of the Mingei’s international folk art, craft and design exhibition in Balboa Park. In sight of its spiritual masks, woodwork and sculpture, we sampled plant-based ingredients and spices, prepared faithfully as possible as if in an ancient kitchen. Try West African suya-spiced chicken, curried peanut broth and sweet potato, or enjoy a snack tray featuring Egyptian almond dukkah, roasted eggplant walnut dip, Vietnamese pork meatball and Mediterranean ahi crudo and lemongrass.

MARISI OF LA JOLLA

A few kilometres north of San Diego, tucked in a cove, is La Jolla, where I’d vowed to visit since my dear cousin Ruth sent us her seaside cliff paintings decades ago.

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After walking the beach and boutiques to work up an appetite, we couldn’t wait to sample Marisi’s Mexican-Italian fusion. Combining the first names of the current owners’ Mexican grandparents, Marila and Isodoro, it opened two years ago as a thank you from the family, who loved of Italian food and wanted to enhance it through open hearth cooking.

In a leafy trattoria setting, an ambitious antipasti selection with chicken liver mousse led to Einkorn Cavatelli, a short rib ragu, desserts and espresso. The chefs work in the open, beneath a shelf of massive old country cookbooks.

OLD TOWN STATE HISTORIC PARK

Visitors are transported 200 years back when Spaniards from Mexico sailed north to establish the first of 21 missions, making San Diego the “birthplace of California.”

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Walk the path that soldiers, padres and merchants eventually expanded into the circular La Plaza de La Armas, hub of commerce, religious festivals, bullfighting and horse racing. Five original adobe buildings stand amid the cafes, shops and small museums. The daily Fiesta de Reyes has outdoor concerts, next to preserved and restored commercial buildings, such as the Old West tobacconist Racine & Laramie.

A giant American flag, like the first unfurled here in 1846, waves over the Plaza, marking the abrupt takeover by the expanding United States after the Mexican War. It’s anchored to a ship’s mast in homage to San Diego’s seafaring era. The park also recreates the town’s first school, courthouse, has a Wells Fargo Museum with a stagecoach, a blacksmith and a quaint old West tobacconist, Racine & Laramie.

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The rustic Cosmopolitan Hotel, a one-time adobe inn, has a vivid story and is still in use.

WHALEY HOUSE MUSEUM

What you might enjoy most about “America’s most haunted home,” a long-time haunt of paranormal researchers, are carefully preserved everyday 19th-century artifacts, clothing and furniture.

But one of the resident spirits might decide to make its presence known. In 1857, Thomas Whaley built his two-storey Greek Revival mansion above the former Old Town gallows where horse thief ‘Yankee Jim’ Robinson was among those executed. A generation of Whaleys were then plagued by death and personal misfortune on the property. The self-guided tour takes about an hour.

MARITIME PARK AND MUSEUM

Exploring nine ships for one price is well worth this voyage through nautical time.

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Star attraction is the 65-metre long, iron-hulled Star of India, world’s oldest active sailing vessel, whose three masts dominate the Embarcadero Walkway. Built on the Isle of Man in 1863, its many lives included merchant service to the Far East, emigrant transport for Britons to New Zealand and an Alaskan fisher. Clamber around features of her upper decks or go below to see the carefully arranged rigging that will fascinate sea dogs. There are displays of life in its cramped quarters for a full crew and passengers on extended trips in the age of sail.

On to a tall ship from the same era, the Californian, an armed Revenue Cutter who hunted smugglers and tax evaders of the gold rush days, then back another century with H.M.S. Surprise, a replica of a Royal Navy frigate built from original plans. Her authenticity earned a role in the 2003 movie Master and Commander with Russell Crowe. It’s next to the San Salvador, re-creation of a 16th century Spanish galleon that would’ve carried San Diego’s first non-indigenous settlers.

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Victorian elegance is seen aboard the steam ferry Berkeley’s stained-glass windows on the main deck. She was the first propeller driven passenger ship to work San Francisco Bay and aided in evacuating Frisco after its deadly 1906 earthquake.

There’s more U.S. naval history in the museum’s Cold War-era craft, the deep-water sub USS Dolphin and a Swift Boat that patrolled the coast of Vietnam. The aircraft carrier Midway is a separate fee, but is worth the half day’s exploration, including the historic air arsenal on flight deck display.

BALBOA PARKA

We’re forever a fan of cities with a dedicated district for museums and art galleries. It’s even better here, with almost 20 locations including theatres and memorials, set in leafy, laid-back Balboa Park next to the famous San Diego Zoo.

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Chimes of the 141-metre California Tower, above swaying palm trees, were ringing out Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven as we entered our first stop, the Museum of Art, an ornate “plateresque” design, like the Tower and many around it, erected for the Panama-California Exposition 110 years ago. We were just in time for docent Betty’s walk-and-talk of unknown female American artists.

Working our way past the Natural History Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art, the Model Railroad Museum, Japanese Friendship Garden, Science Center and Automotive Museum, we came upon modern society’s footprint, the Comicon and Air and Space Museums. San Diego Comicon, July 25-28 this year, is one of the biggest in the world.

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SPIRIT OF SAN DIEGO CRUISE

A tour so nice, we took it twice, an hour in each direction, exploring north and south in this fascinating multi-use harbour. Sipping a cold one on the sunny observation deck, take in a mix of nature and naval power, sunbathing sea lions and frolicking dolphins with pleasure craft. Even the hi-tech Coast Guard interceptors, there to assure all stay clear of military bases, don’t mind putting on a demonstration of their craft’s maneuverability.

The Spirit was allowed to bring us close to warships in town, to the air strip where Tom Cruise’s motorcycle roared in Top Gun, past Navy Seal headquarters, giant drydocks of the fleet, and the commercial port where containers load and empty everything from cars to pineapples.

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There’s photo-ops of the skyline, which is kept in height check as the airport borders downtown, all the way to snow-capped Big Bear Mountain, a three-hour drive towards Los Angeles for some winter-type fun.

San Diego also has ties to Charles Lindbergh as his Spirit of St. Louis custom monoplane was assembled here at Ryan Aeronautical for its historic non-stop trans-Atlantic flight in 1927. Its airport was named for the celebrated pilot, a rare big-city one-runway for takeoffs and landings, which allows for rapid transport into town.

To get around on bus or train check out the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System site at sdmts.com.

CORONADO BEACH

Make this your last stop or extended layover after the all-day guided trolley tour that loops 11 pick-up points in its 40-km route, originating in Old Town.

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The beach approach is a thrill, across the bridge of the same name, 3.4-km long, its widest span tall enough for most of the Navy’s biggest ships to enter the harbour. Then-governor Ronald Reagan made the first drive across it.

Hotel Del Coronado is a surviving wooden Victorian resort from 1888, once the largest in the world. Four U.S. presidents had already stayed there before its days as a Hollywood playground, where Marilyn Monroe filmed Some Like It Hot, which plays 24/7 in the lobby. The beach itself is a few kilometres wide with water sports rentals and is ideal at sunset for a stroll or viewed from a lounge chair.

IF YOU GO

Air Canada has daily non-stop flights from Toronto and Vancouver to San Diego.

For tourism information, go to sandiego.org.

lhornby@postmedia.com

X: @sunhornby

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