San Diego Best Attractions

Boomers family fun center is a great place for a Saturday night outing (or any time really).

Challenge each other to a miniature golf game, race each other with the go-karts, splash each other with the bumper boats, try your luck at the batting cages, or see who is the champion of lazer tag. There is also an area with rides for the kids.

There are actually two mini-golf courses. If you don’t play the 18th hole you can save your ball and sneak over to the other course when you’re done with the first. Also, the storybook land course has a wheel where you have a chance at winning a prize.

The lazer tag is kind of lame compared to the bigger lazer tag centers in San Diego, but it is still fun. It’s just small.

For more information, hours, and ticket prices click on the link…

Boomers San Diego

There are five major San Diego theme parks! We also have some smaller amusement parks that I will share with you. Most of them are open all year, except Knott’s Soak City which is open May-September.

Whether you are looking to get splashed by a killer whale, watch a polar bear swim underwater, see a free-roaming giraffe, go down a giant water slide, or ride a roller coaster, you can it all here at one of our awesome theme parks!

Click on the links for more information on each one.

Theme Parks with an entry fee:

San Diego Zoo
Sea World San Diego theme park
Wild Animal Park
Legoland theme park
Knott’s Soak City

These amusement parks have no entry fee, you just pay per ride:

Belmont Park
Boomer’s

San Diego museums have something for everyone. You could spend days just visiting all the museums here. Most of the museums are in Balboa Park, but there are other museums around the city.

Every Tuesday there are museums in the park offering free admission which is a great way to see the popular museums. Also, some of the museums, like the San Diego Museum of Art have cool evening events every few months. Culture and Cocktails is one of my favorite museum events. Check the website for more info.

Balboa Park Museums

Centro Cultural de la Raza
Japanese Friendship Garden
Marston House
Mingei International Museum
Museum of Photographic Arts
Museum of San Diego History
Reuben H. Fleet Science Center
San Diego Air & Space Museum
San Diego Art Institute (SDAI): Museum of the Living Artist
San Diego Automotive Museum
San Diego Hall of Champions Sports Museum
San Diego Model Railroad Museum
San Diego Museum of Art
San Diego Museum of Man
San Diego Natural History Museum
San Diego Zoo
Timken Museum of Art
Veterans Museum & Memorial Center
WorldBeat Center

For more information about the museums click on the link…

Balboa Park Museums

The Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum is on the San Diego Bay. They have an array of meticulously restored aircraft and helicopters both in Midway’s hangar bay and on the flight deck. This is a good museum if you like military history.

You can do a self-guided audio tour or have a docent led tour. Sometimes they have a veteran there to answer questions you may have about life on a carrier. It is really cool to see how the military people lived aboard the carrier… from where they shopped to where they played to where they slept. The views from the decks are beautiful, too, and you can spend a day exploring and even have lunch on the ship.

Right near the midway is the Maritime Museum. It preserves one of the largest collections of historic sea vessels in the United States. There are seven ships in the museum, with the centerpiece of the museum’s collection is the Star of India, an 1863 iron bark. The museum maintains the MacMullen Library and Research Archives aboard the 1898 ferryboat Berkeley. The museum also publishes the quarterly peer-reviewed journal Mains’l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History.
Midway Museum
Maritime Museum

The other museums include:

San Diego Chinese Historical Museum
Serra Museum
Stuart Collection of Sculpture at UCSD
Veterans Museum & Memorial Center
Women’s History Museum and Education Center
San Dieguito Heritage Museum
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
MCRD San Diego Command Museum
Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum

Visit the Arco Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, in southern San Diego. It has a 150- acre campus including training fields and tracks, athlete dorms, and Otay Lake Reservoir. It also has the largest permanent archery range in North America; an artificial all-weather field hockey surface; four soccer fields; a 15,000 square-foot canoe/kayak and rowing boat house; four tennis courts; a 400-meter track and six acres for field events; and a cycling criterion course. An aquatic complex and a gymnasium are among the future facilities planned.

Visitors start their experience at the Copley Visitor Center, complete with theater and an Olympic Spirit Store, featuring an extensive line of official USOC and Olympic merchandise and memorabilia. On the tour they see, first-hand, athletes in training from an elevated visitor promenade known as the Conrad N. Hilton Olympic Path.

Free guided tours are offered Tuesday through Saturday at 1:30PM. Group and educational tours are also available with a reservation. To make a reservation, please call (619) 482-6215. Complimentary self-guided tours are available from 9:00AM to 5:00PM, seven days a week. For more information call the Copley Center at (619) 482-6222

For more information click on the link…

Olympic Training Center

Old Town is a really cool part of San Diego. It is where the early settlers built their forts and homes.

The first school house is still standing there, along with the haunted Whaley House, a cemetery, the first court house, other original buildings and museums, plus some modern shops and restaurants.

You can visit the Victorian gingerbread houses that have been moved there. There are some open grassy areas for picnics, too. Most of the museums and the visitors center have free admission

Bazaar Del Mundo is located there. It has a bunch of shops with really cool gifts and souvenirs.

There are daily tours at 11 am & 2 pm and additional tours Wednesday – Sunday 1 pm & 3 pm. Tours begin at the Robinson-Rose Visitor Center.

There are living history activities on Wednesdays & Saturdays from 10 am – 4 pm and most days the people are dressed in old-fashioned clothing.

You MUST get some fresh tortillas with butter and salsa from the tortilla ladies on the corner of Cafe Cayote. They are the best!

The park is located on San Diego Avenue and Twiggs Street, and is conveniently adjacent to the Transit Center, with Coaster, Trolley, and MTS Bus service.

There is a trolley tour of the city that leaves from there. I definitely recommend this tour because it will take you to the main sights and lets you get on and off at will.

I’ve done it twice and I would allow a whole day to see everything the tour shows you. If you can’t spend the whole day on the tour, it is fun just riding the trolley, and without getting off and on it takes about 2 hours.

Trolley Tour Info
Old Town Museums and Attractions List

Mission San Diego De Alcala is a really interesting old mission that has been well preserved and restored. It is the first of the 21 missions and known as the Mother of the Missions.

It is really cool to walk around and see how the Native Americans and padres lived. You can see a building where they slept, the church, where they farmed, and their artifacts in the museum. You can even attend church there on Sunday because it is an active Catholic Parish in the Diocese of San Diego.

Every year they have a carnival called the Festival of the Bells.

Interesting facts:

The mission was founded on July 16, 1769 by Blessed Junipero Serra. It was designated as a Minor Basilica in 1976 by Pope Paul VI.

Mission San Diego is sometimes referred to as the Plymouth Rock of the West Coast.

The first seeds of agriculture were planted at Mission San Diego, which laid the foundations for the great agricultural state that California is today.

It was possible for historians to find out what crops were grown at each mission by studying the components of the adobe bricks.

When homes were being built in Old Town, it was common practice to take materials from the abandoned mission to be used in constructing the homes.

For more information and hours click on the link…

Mission San Diego De Alcala

You can also travel down El Camino Real which was the road used to connect all 21 missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco…

El Camino Real

You can also visit Mission San Luis Rey. It is the largest of the 21 missions. It has a museum, cemetery, church, and is on 56 acres of land.

Mission San Luis Rey

Liberty Station in Point Loma is a planned community on the former NTC (naval training center). When completed it will have the largest waterfront park since Mission Bay. It also has a variety of restaurants, shops, hotels, and museums.

NTC Park has ball fields, picnic areas, basketball areas, a sports plaza, playgrounds, a multipurpose field, and an esplanade.

There is a chapel and promenade available for weddings and other events.

There is a Nickelodeon Resort planned to be built there with a huge water park.

For a full list of merchants and other venues click on the link…

Liberty Station

Just north of La Jolla Shores beach are the La Jolla Tide Pools. South of the shores is La Jolla Cove and La Jolla Children’s Pool Beach. All are very beautiful and definitely worth a visit.

If you walk up the beach past the pier you’ll come to a rocky area known locally as Dike Rock. Right before the rocky area starts to turn into another cove is where the La Jolla Tide Pools are at low tide. I’ve seen sea anemones, sea cucumbers, fish, shellfish, starfish, and even an octopus during my visits to the La Jolla Tide Pools. Just make sure to check to make sure when low tide is before you go.

The beach at La Jolla Cove is a very small beach within walking distance from the Children’s Pool Beach, and is considered one of the most beautiful beaches in Southern California. The sand on this beach however is coarse and gritty.

Above La Jolla Cove is Scripps Park, a grassy area excellent for picnicking. The beach is also within walking distance of many shops and restaurants.

La Jolla Cove is popular for swimming, scuba diving and snorkeling. However, since La Jolla Cove is within the San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park(a marine refuge area), “Swimming devices” (surfboards, boogie boards, even inflatable mattresses) are not permitted at the cove, and this rule is carefully enforced by the lifeguards, specifically the part defined as the Ecological Reserve.

Just a short swim away to the right of the coast is “Sunny Jim Cave,” a popular destination for tourists (see “La Jolla Cave” link).

No fishing or collecting of marine invertebrates, (even taking dead specimens or shells) is allowed. All sea animals are highly protected in this area by law, and individuals taking part in festivities such as crab hunting, fish punching, and hermit crab domination are at high risk of criminal prosecution.

The La Jolla Childrens Pool is home to many Harbor Seals. In 1990′s, to help promote a reserve at Seal Rock, Sea World began dropping all rescued and rehabilitated harbor seals from the entire county in the kelp beds off Seal Rock near this beach. The seals were used to humans and joined them while they swam there.

To this day they are very acclimated to people and will play with swimmers and divers. Often the seals will nip at the feet of divers and are particularly attracted to the hands and feet of smaller swimmers. While no deaths have occurred, lifeguards on the beach have added tourniquets and hospital grade skin disinfectant to their daily stock of supplies.

Swimming is allowed but not typically recommended due to a high Coliform Index which some believe is due to excessive seal feces. This, however has never been proven. Though many people do swim there, few get sick, and fewer still are hospitalized.

California sea lions also use this beach as a haul-out area. Children are warned to avoid the Children’s Beach during the pupping season lest they be hauled in, not out, of the ocean.

La Jolla Cove

Children’s Pool

La Jolla Tide Pools

Coronado is beautiful! It feels like you are in a small beach town. There is a main drag that has little shops, restaurants, and bars. It has some of my favorite beaches.

The “island” is the perfect place to swim, sail, surf, bike, run, walk, rollerblade, play tennis, play golf, take a tour, take in a play or visit the museum.

I love taking the ferry across from downtown. In the summer on Sundays they have a jazz band playing at the dock. You can also just drive across the bridge, which gives you spectacular views of the downtown skyline.

It is also home of the Hotel Del, which is a very old and famous hotel. They have afternoon tea there and it is also a splendid place to grab a drink and watch the sunset. The hotel is full of history and is even said to be haunted!

The Carlsbad Flower Fields or “The Flower Fields® at Carlsbad Ranch” is an amazing place with almost 50 acres of colorful flowers blooming. The view from the top of the hill with the colors of the flowers and the ocean in the background is breathtaking.

They are in a full bloom for approximately six to eight weeks each year – from early March through early May. I would recommend you call and make sure the flowers are all in bloom before you go, if possible.

You can walk around on your own or there are group tours available for an additional fee. You can take a wagon tour around the gardens so you don’t get too tired.

Features:

Nursery

Gift Shop

Miniature Rose Garden- Award winning miniature roses.

Carlsbad Mining Company – you can mine for gems in sand.

Sweet Pea Maze – walk through a living maze of fragrant and colorful “old fashion” sweet pea blossoms.

Historic Poinsettia Display – 1,500 square foot greenhouse filled with the world famous Ecke poinsettias. Enjoy hundreds of exciting poinsettias in over twenty rare and unusual varieties.

American Flag of Flowers – Red, white and blue anemone flowers strategically planted on a 300 by 170 foot hillside pay tribute to the United States.

Santa’s Playground- home to the whimsical play houses and gigantic mushrooms that were part of Santa’s Village in Lake Arrowhead years ago. Come see the “Guard Shack’, ‘Doll House’, ‘Crooked Treehouse’ and huge colorful mushrooms that so many of us remember from our very own childhood!

For more information, hours, directions, and prices click the link… http://www.theflowerfields.com/