second trip to San Diego: much nicer in daylight, in Balboa Park, on trolley, without douchebags

[pseydtonne]

ceruleanbluegal had to check out some exhibits in San Diego before they closed. Thus she took the train down Friday morning and I came down Friday evening. We spent the weekend without a car and without problems getting around. San Diego is not perfect for going car-free, but it's far nicer than Los Angeles for seeing a lot of the place.

Everyone knows about San Diego's trolleys. They opened their first modern LRT line in 1981 and the network has grown slowly but solidly since then. However it's not a lattice as much as it is serpentine, covering downtown in confusing loops but otherwise handling a huge amount of suburban turf. You can live far from downtown and commute easily by trolley. However you can also wait a while at night or on a weekend. The transit system's web site is great when you're looking up things at home, but it's not quite smartphone-ready. Nevertheless they have more of the necessary mentality to make progress than LA does: they thought about tourists wanting to go to the zoo, they thought about commuters in El Cajon and Chula Vista, and they're still observing.

Now for the rest of the city. It's pretty. It's not like LA. It has plenty of sprawl and expressways, but it has the coverage sufficient to get you through it. It has Balboa Park, which looks like a primordial realm just north east of downtown and close enough to the airport. It's home to one of the largest and nicest zoos in the U.S., and that only takes up about a fifth of the space. There is a parkways running through it, one that passes way below the lovely viaduct where the views of the valley are stunning and occasionally punctuated by Southwest Airline's colors.

Balboa Park, which honestly I didn't want to leave, was home of the 1915 Panama-California Expo. The Mission-style buildings are still there and kept in gorgeous condition. The sculpture gardens, the side museums, the colonnade, the... skip work, I just wanna go back...

The missus went out to La Jolla, a ritzy near-suburb along the Pacific, while I was in the park. We went to Old Town, then went to Coronado to see the famous hotel. It's a Belle Epoque hotel, but it's more like a cruise ship that got embedded in the shore. Classy, expensive, well-kept and yet right along the ocean.

We did not get to see enough, just enough to know we want to visit again. I've convinced her that we should head to Ensenada in Baja, about an hour south of Tijuana. Neither of us are interested in that Niagara Falls tourist trap, but we both want in on the grilled fish scene along the lower coast.

By the way, taking the train to San Diego is cost-effective. Most of the hotels downtown want $26 to park each day and the drive along I-5 is hellish traffic all the way. For $36 each we rode in new train cars and didn't have to stress.

Comments

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

I only ever go to the Zoo. I really ought to explore more of the park. I keep meaning to....

[starphire.livejournal.com]

Huh. Actually, except for the line to Tijuana, I didn't realize they'd grown a trolley-based transit system, and I've been going there since I was a little kid.
I guess we always just braved the freeways (which never seemed jam-prone back in the day), and other than cabs and taking a city bus once I've always thought of SD as a thoroughly car-centric place. Sure, they've been able to expand the freeway network without difficulty, thanks to the many canyons with walls too steep and basins too flood-prone to do much else with them. They also made dandy hidden routes for illegal immigrants to get away from the border region - helicopters hovering over the arroyos became a common presence eventually.

I suspect the buildings from the Expo would not have been revived and kept up had it not been for the astonishing growth of the city itself. I can still clearly remember visits years ago when the facades were obviously crumbling in prominent places, and civic groups were bumming for donations in hopes of at least preserving them against further degradation. The last time I was there, they'd been beautifully restored. I have always loved this park.

"The missus"? Is that a slip of the tongue, or did you guys get hitched?

[tenshikurai9.livejournal.com]

One of my mystery hunt team mates came from San Diego. She runs one of the comic book shops. Did you get a chance to see if there's any artsy, alternative, whatever parts of town?

[tckma.livejournal.com]

I remember visiting San Diego and taking the trolley; I can remember the reason for the visit (Department of Defense conference) but not why I took the trolley.

I remember thinking "What the heck is this? Why is it going around this way rather than a more direct route?"

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I figured that out, actually. It's a downtown loop, but the busier part of the loop is the northern side while the coastal side has the convention center. Thus they send the lines in weird directions to give the business area enough trains per hour. There is a logic, but it's not first-glance, tourist-friendly logic.