Exciting San Diego

Nursing, Nov 2004 by Munson, Carol

* Animal lovers will enjoy the San Diego Zoo. Located adjacent to Balboa Park, it's one of the world's largest zoos and home to giant pandas and koalas along with about 4,000 other animals. An offshoot of the zoo, San Diego Wild Animal Park is a 2,200-acre park exhibiting wild and exotic animals who roam at will in large open spaces. You can tour the park via the Wgasa Bush Line Railway, a true safari-like experience, or traverse exhibits such as the Kilimanjar Safari Walk on foot, watching for lions, tigers, and elephants. If you're looking for sea life, try SeaWorld San Diego. This 165-acre adventure park, located on Mission Bay's south shore, features sea lions, otters, walruses, and other sea creatures.

* Sports fans inevitably will end up at Qualcomm Stadium, which two major league teams-the San Diego Padres and the San Diego Chargers-call home.

* No visitor should miss the San Diego Convention Center, site of the Visitor's Bureau, where you can pick up tons of information about San Diego and the surrounding area. It's also the official home for many conventions.

Dining, theater, and shopping

San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter is the place for premier dining, shopping, and entertainment. Here, you'll find an eclectic blend of food, fine art galleries, boutiques, bazaars, specialty shops, and theaters. In the evenings, old-fashioned gas lamps illuminate wide brick walkways and sidewalk cafes. The area has coffeehouses, clubs, theaters with live performances, and more than 90 restaurants.

Other shopping areas are scattered throughout the city and include the Bazaar Del Mundo with more than a dozen shops featuring Mexican folk art, Del Mar Plaza with upscale boutiques, Kobey's Swap Meet (a large open-air market with everything from produce to furniture), San Diego's most renowned shopping mall at Horton Plaza, and other large contemporary malls.

At Seaport Village, shoppers will discover 75 waterfront shops and restaurants, daily live entertainment, a vintage carousel, and horse-drawn carriages.

Hiking, biking, water sports, and wine tasting

San Diego is also a place for active travelers. To the east of the city is the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, where you can play tennis or golf at a resort or hike along trails to see an array of cacti, succulents, and palms.

To the north along Highways 67 and 78 lie quaint towns such as Ramona, an ideal place for horseback riding, and the historic mining town of Julian with its Wild West-style main street.

A 15-minute ferry trip across the bay from downtown San Diego is the picturesque community of Coronado. For more than 100 years, this peninsula with its more-perfect-than-Hollywood seaside setting has been the destination of choice for presidents, stars, artists, and others. It's a shopper's paradise with specialty shops and restaurants at the Ferry Landing Marketplace and sidewalk cafes along Orange Avenue. You can walk, rent bikes or rollerblades, and explore 15 miles of scenic bike paths.

To the north along the coast are still more charming beachside towns such as Del Mar, La Jolla, and the eclectic Solana Beach, all ideal for a day's outing on the beach or strolling in town. Local weather promises a long season of outdoor activities. From June through November, you can enjoy swimming, surfing, waterskiing, scuba diving, and boating in this region.