Soak Up Sun, Seafood and Culture in San Diego

Population: 1,425,976
Size: 372.4 square miles
Elevation: 62 feet
Sunshine: 266 days
Best Day of the Year: September 22, when fall begins

This balmy curl of coastline is a funny mix, part military town and part laid-back flip-flop town. It was a pair of world’s fairs that first put San Diego on the 20th century’s map–in particular, its 1,400-acre Balboa Park, created to celebrate the Panama Canal’s completion. The park’s botanical gardens and dazzling Spanish Renaissance architecture make it a jewel of the city. (So, too, does the San Diego Zoo, founded by the surgeon Harry Wegeforth.) Jonas Salk’s discovery of the polio vaccine in the 1950s led the city to gift him a swath of oceanfront in La Jolla to build a first-class research lab “worthy of a visit by Picasso.” The result is the Salk Institute (visitors welcome). Another doctor, with the last name Seuss, settled here after WWII, and the Monterey cypress believed to have inspired The Lorax long stood in Ellen Browning Scripps Park until toppling in 2019. The park remains an electric-green perch from which to watch migrating whales.

Want to carve some tasty wedges? Hit Pacific Beach Surf Shop for lessons (or stay dry and view the board collection at Bird’s SurfShed), then sit harborside at Mitch's Seafood for catch-of-the-day tacos. Avoid decision fatigue over the city’s more than 150 breweries by heading to O'Brien's Pub with rotating taps of local beer.