My husband and I will be attending a conference next week in San Diego. We will have 2 free days to do our own thing-what's a good way to fill 2 days? we've already deciced to see the zoo.Any other suggestions?

Maybe in conjunction with the zoo, wander through the rest of Balboa Park. There are museums and outdoor atmosphere that can be fun.

The Gaslamp District in downtown is the place to find nightlife, restaurants, music,etc. Do a search on this forum on gaslamp and you should get some more detial and recommendations.

San Diego is a beach town, so try to get to the beach, even if the weather isn't warm enough for sitting out or swimming. Ocean Beach and Pacific Beach will give you a sense of the "surfer" town.

Finally you may enjoy Del Mar and/or La Jolla for upscale shopping and wandering.

If you don't already plan to have a car I would give some thought to getting one, as you will have much more freedom to see what you want to at your leisure.

I'm not a San Diego expert, but I just got back from a weeklong visit there on Friday. This was my third time visiting.

If you don't have your fill of animals at the zoo, you might like the Wild Animal Park in Escondido even more. You'd definitely need a car for that. We found that it was cheaper to buy a (tax deductible) single zoo/WAP membership that came with 2 free guest passes than to pay for individual entrances at both places.

If you don't have a car, then Balboa Park, the Trolley ride, and a harbor cruise would be a good start. We enjoyed a meal at the Fish Market, very close to the harbor criuise boats. We wished we had taken a 2 hour cruise instead of just the one hour version.

Jenny,
I second the idea of the Old Town Trolley Tours. They take you to some of the best sites in the city and you can get off and on to explore. Have lunch and a margarita in Old Town at Casa de Pico or Casa de Bandini. Have fun!

I thought of a couple more things that may be useful:

We bought a "Passport to Balboa Park", and it didn't pay off. It would have been better just to pay entrance fees at a couple of museums we really wanted to see. On Tuesdays, some of the museums in Balboa Park are free on a rotating schedule. My parents were told that the San Diego history museum will be free for the next few weeks. The Timken is a small, free museum with some undistinguished art. However, I was fascinated by a bizarre exhibit there on Heironymus Bosch. Definitely memorable and worth 30 minutes.

I just returned from a week in San Diego (a convention). I didn't have nearly as much time during the day as I had hoped, but I did get around a bit. The Gaslamp District is a lot of fun for good food [lots of it - Candelas (nouveau Mexican, romantic), Royale Brasserie and Bar (French and seafood), and Trattoria Mare & Monti (Italian were good], clubs, bars, shopping, and people watching. I enjoyed walking along the beach in Coronado and visiting the Hotel Del Coronado. A cruise is certainly nice; my company chartered a boat for a three-hour dinner cruise on the bay. La Jolla is wonderful and very busy. It can be tough at busy times to get a cab back to San Diego, so do a little research ahead to see if you can find a La Jolla-based company that goes to where you are staying or call well ahead of the time you plan to return to the hotel area. I didn't go to the zoo, but Balboa Park is nice for a 1-2 hour stroll (excluding museums).