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SAN DIEGO · CALIFORNIA

The bay, the breakers, and year-round sun.

Harbor cruises and sunset sails, La Jolla sea caves and whale-season boats, the Gaslamp and Balboa Park, the zoo up on the mesa and the run south to Baja.

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Only here

Only on this stretch of coast.

Harbor cruises and food tours you can book in any port city. The sea caves, the whales off the point and the zoo on the mesa belong to San Diego alone.

Carved by the Pacific

The La Jolla Sea Caves

Seven caves are cut into the sandstone bluffs at La Jolla, only reachable from the water. You paddle a tandem kayak under the headland and into the Cove ecological reserve, where leopard sharks school in the shallows every summer and sea lions haul out on the rocks an arm’s length away. There is no other coastline like it in Southern California.

  1. 1 La Jolla Sea Caves Kayak Tour For Two (Tandem Kayak) ★ 4.5 1,205 reviews
  2. 2 Original La Jolla Sea Cave Kayak Tour for Two ★ 4.5 871 reviews
  3. 3 La Jolla: 2-Hour Kayak Tour of the 7 Caves ★ 4.5 586 reviews
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Two migrations

Whales Off Point Loma

San Diego sits on the gray whale highway: thousands pass the Point Loma headland between December and April on the longest mammal migration on earth. Come summer the giant blue whales move in to feed, and a half-day boat out of the bay is one of the only places you can reasonably hope to see the largest animal that has ever lived.

  1. 1 San Diego Whale Watching Cruise ★ 5.0 2,317 reviews
  2. 2 San Diego Whale Watching & Dolphin Cruise ★ 4.5 1,588 reviews
  3. 3 Two-Hour Luxury Whale Watching Tour from Oceanside ★ 4.5 937 reviews
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Up on the mesa

The San Diego Zoo

The most famous zoo in the world sits inside Balboa Park, a hundred acres of canyon planted as a botanical garden with the animals threaded through it. Out in the back country the Safari Park runs the same animals across open range you cross by tram, the closest thing to an African plain on the California coast.

  1. 1 San Diego Zoo 1-Day Pass: Any Day Ticket ★ 4.5 4,248 reviews
  2. 2 San Diego Zoo Admission Ticket ★ 4.7 1,332 reviews
  3. 3 San Diego Zoo: 1-Day Admission Ticket ★ 4.6 1,150 reviews
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Start here

The most popular thing to do in San Diego.

More visitors book this than anything else in the city. If you only have time for one, make it this one.

Gaslamp & Little Italy

A city that runs on fish tacos.

San Diego eats well and casually: the taco shops the rest of the country copies, Little Italy’s piazza and Saturday market, the Gaslamp’s food halls, and more craft breweries than any other county in America. A guided afternoon walks you through the best of it, one plate at a time.

Read the guide: the best food tours in San Diego →
★ 5.0 Taste of Little Italy in San Diego ★ 4.5 Gaslamp Quarter Food and Drink Tour: Brothels, Bites & Booze ★ 5.0 Carlsbad Food Tour

The coastline

Seventy miles of Pacific beach.

From the surf breaks of the north county down through Mission Beach and Pacific Beach to the sandstone coves of La Jolla and the wide flat sand at Coronado. Warm by California standards, gentle where you want it and head-high where you don’t, with a different beach for every kind of day.

La Jolla & the coast →

Across the border

Tijuana is twenty minutes south.

The trolley runs to within a short walk of the busiest land border on earth, and on the far side is a food-and-drink scene that long ago outgrew its old reputation. Guided day trips handle the crossing both ways so you can spend the day eating, not queuing.

  1. 1 Intro to Mexico Walking Tour: Tijuana Day Trip from San Diego ★ 4.5 616 reviews
  2. 2 Crossing Borders: Tijuana Day Trip from San Diego ★ 4.5 519 reviews
  3. 3 Tijuana Local Walking Tour from San Diego ★ 4.5 283 reviews
See all 9 Tijuana day trips →

By activity

Pick how to spend the day.

Harbor cruise if you want the skyline. Sunset sail if you want the evening. A whale boat for the open ocean, a kayak for the sea caves. Food, ghosts, the trolley loop, or two wheels along the boardwalk.

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Every neighborhood, every stretch of coast, and every way to get out on the water.