 Visiting
Balboa Park San Diego
Sumptuous Balboa Park contains one
of the largest groups of museums in the US, scattered
either side and to the south of El Prado, the road
that bisects the park. Yet its greatest charms are
its trees, gardens, statues, traffic-free promenades
and Spanish Colonial-style buildings. Within easy
reach of downtown by buses #7, #16 or #25, the park
is large but fairly easy to get around on foot - if
you tire, there's a free tram. The $30 Balboa Park
Passport , which allows one-time admission to all
twelve of the park's museums and its Japanese garden
(though not the zoo), is available from the visitors
information center (daily 9am-4pm; tel 619/239-0512),
inside the beautifully reconstructed House of Hospitality.
Most of the museums are closed on Mondays, and most
are free on varying Tuesdays.
Minor works by Rembrandt and El Greco and a stirring
collection of Russian icons make the stifling formality
of the Timkin Museum of Art (Tues-Sat 10am-4.30pm,
Sun 1.30-4.30pm; closed Sept; free; gort.ucsd.edu
/sj/timken) worth enduring. The San Diego Museum of
Art (Tues-Sun 10am-4.30pm; $8; ) has few individually
striking items in its permanent collection, save for
a small selection of 17th-century Dutch works by Hals
and Rembrandt, but it's the main venue for touring
shows and offers some exquisitely crafted pieces from
China and Japan. Outside, don't miss the free Sculpture
Court and Garden , with formidable works by Henry
Moore and Alexander Calder. The Museum of Man (daily
10am-4.30pm; $6; ), which straddles El Prado, veers
from banal crafts demonstrations to excellent Native
American displays, artifacts, folklore and physical
remains.
The child-oriented Reuben H. Fleet Science Center
(Mon & Tues 9.30am-6.30pm, Wed-Sun 9.30am-9pm;
science center $6.50, with theater or simulator $9,
all three $11; ), close to the Park Boulevard end
of El Prado, is notable mainly for its Space Theater's
huge IMAX screen and virtual reality simulator, which
take you on stomach-churning trips into outer and
inner space. Across the plaza, the Natural History
Museum (daily 9.30am-4.30pm; $6; ) has a great collection
of fossils and pulls no punches in its coverage of
threatened species. Just behind, in the Spanish Village
Art Center (daily 11am-4pm; free), craftspeople in
37 studios and galleries practice skills such as painting,
sculpture, pottery and glassworking.
The enormous San Diego Zoo (daily: mid June-early
Sept 7am-10pm; early Sept-mid June 9am-dusk; last
entry an hour before closing; ), immediately north
of the main museums, is one of the world's best. Its
wide selection of animals, many of them rare, are
restrained in "psychological cages," without
bars. (Don't depend on the much-hyped but usually
sleeping Chinese pandas for entertainment, however.)
Basic admission , including the children's zoo, is
$18.50 (kids 3-11 $9.50); a Deluxe Tour ticket ($28.50,
kids $16.50) includes a bus tour and a round-trip
ride on the Skyfari overhead tramway. |
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