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Sights & Beaches Overview

Exploring San Diego may be an endless adventure, but there are limitations, especially if you don't have a car. San Diego is more a chain of separate communities than a cohesive city, and many of the major attractions are separated by some distance. Walking is good for getting an up-close look at how San Diegans live, but true Southern Californians use the freeways that crisscross the county. Interstate 5 runs a direct north-south route through the coastal communities from Orange County in the north to the Mexican border. Interstates 805 and 15 do much the same inland. Interstate 8 is the main east-west route. Routes 163, 52, and 94 serve as connectors.

If you're going to drive around San Diego, study the map before you hit the road. The freeways are convenient and fast most of the time, but if you miss your turnoff or get caught in commuter traffic, you'll experience a none-too-pleasurable hallmark of Southern California living -- freeway madness. Drivers rush around on a complex freeway system with the same fervor they use for jogging scores of marathons each year. They particularly enjoy speeding up at interchanges and entrance and exit ramps. Be sure you know where you're going before you join the chase.

Public transportation has improved a great deal in the past decade: the San Diego Trolley, which runs as far south as San Ysidro, has expanded in the north from Old Town to beyond Mission San Diego and San Diego State University; commuter Coaster trains run frequently between downtown San Diego and Oceanside, with convenient stops in Del Mar, Encinitas, Carlsbad, and other charming coastal towns; and the bus system covers almost all of the county. Making connections to see the various sights is time-consuming, however. Note that Fashion Valley shopping center, Old Town, and downtown are the three major bus transfer points, but because many of the city's attractions are along the coast, and the coast is itself a major attraction, you'll be best off staying there if you're carless. The bike-path system is extensive, the weather is almost always bicycle-friendly, and lots of buses and trolley cars have bike racks, so two-wheeling is a good option for the athletic. The great distances between sights render taxis prohibitively expensive for general transportation, although cabs are useful for getting around once you're in a given area. Old Town Trolley Tours has a hop-on, hop-off route of popular spots around the city, but it takes so long to cover the route that you're unlikely to see more than two areas in one day.