San Diego Downtown Hotels
Always vibrant and active, downtown San Diego offers
visitors convenient access to some of San DIego's
finest hotels, restaurants, shopping, and attractions.
Downtown San Diego has undergone a dramatic
revitalization over the last 15 years that has the
locals and visitors alike coming back downtown to
enjoy some of the new chic eateries and nightclubs
that line the streets of the Gaslamp Quarter, or
take in a harbor cruise or just the
bay views along the Embarcadero, or browse one of
a number of historical museums or a variety of
cultural
events going on nightly. And now with
the recent addition of
the San Diego Padres new ballpark and
the surrounding Ballpark District now complete downtown,
Spring and Summer evenings bring the excitement of
baseball to downtown residents and visitors alike. Read
More
The tall Moorish archways of the
Santa Fe Railroad Depot , at the western end of Broadway
, built in 1915 for the Panama-California Exposition,
still evoke a sense of grandeur. Broadway slices through
the middle of downtown, at its most hectic between
Fourth and Fifth avenues. Shoppers, sailors, yuppies
and slackers linger around the fountains outside Horton
Plaza (Mon-Sat 8.30am-5pm, summer Mon -Sat 10am-9pm,
Sun 11am-7pm; hortonplaza.shoppingtown.com), San Diego's
major upmarket shopping venue, with a somewhat dated
postmodern style that borrows heavily from Art Deco
designs and motifs. Head for the open-air eating places
on its top level; though the cuisine may be more expensive
than in the streets - and offers little more than
the standard fast-food fare of other shopping zones
- it's fun to sit over a coffee and watch the parade
of tourists go by. Take time on your way out to visit
the 21ft-tall Jessop Clock on level one, made for
the California State Fair of 1907.
South of Broadway, a few blocks and yet a world away
from Horton Plaza, the sixteen-block Gaslamp District
, heart of frontier San Diego, is now filled with
smart streets lined with classy cafés, antique
stores, art galleries, and, of course, gas lamps -
now powered by electricity. A tad artificial it may
be, but its late-nineteenth-century buildings are
intriguing to explore. Worth a peek is the Horton
Grand , 311 Island Ave, a reconstruction of two nineteenth-century
hotels originally located a few blocks away, with
Old World decor and hotel staff in Victorian costumes.
West of downtown, the Embarcadero pathway follows
the curve of the bay, and leads to the Maritime Museum
, 1306 N Harbor Drive (daily 9am-8pm, summer closes
at 9pm; $6; ), where the most interesting of three
vintage sailing craft is the Star of India , built
in 1863 and now the world's oldest still-afloat merchant
ship.
Across San Diego Bay from downtown, the isthmus of
Coronado is a well-scrubbed resort community with
a major naval station occupying its western end. It's
of somewhat limited interest, save for the majestically
modern Coronado Bay Bridge , a curving 11,000-foot
span that's one of the area's signature images ($1
toll for southbound travelers without passengers),
and the historic Hotel del Coronado , around which
the town grew. The massive Victorian-turreted "Del"
is where Edward VIII (then Prince of Wales) first
met Mrs Simpson (then a Coronado housewife) in 1920
and where Some Like It Hot was filmed in 1958, posing
as a Miami Beach hotel. The simplest and most scenic
way to get to Coronado is on the San Diego Bay ferry
($2 each way; tel 619/234-4111) which leaves Broadway
Pier daily on the hour between 9am and 9pm (10pm Fri
& Sat). Tickets are available at San Diego Harbor
Excursion , 1050 N Harbor Drive ( ). |
