San Diego Best Attractions

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