Sun, surf and exquisite scenery are the qualities that most visitors equate with San Diego. Nestled in the southern-most corner of California’s coastline, the city is blessed with sun year round and temperate weather during most of its winter months. Many travellers come here just to bask in the warmth and experience what it is like to live in a Southern California paradise.
Surrounded by long sandy peninsulas (which the locals call ‘islands’), San Diego provides the optimum setting for a vacation getaway. Pristine beaches (such as Coronado Island’s secluded waterfront) and trendy upper-class shopping districts, overlooking the bluffs of San Diego’s ‘jewel’, La Jolla, are two of the unique characteristics of this city.
SeaWorld, on the shores of Mission Bay, is yet another. It is the city’s closest and most respected link to the ocean and, in many ways, San Diego’s central identity. The centre for several wildlife conservation programmes, as well as a source for public education, its name is now inextricably linked with San Diego.
The more obvious ties to the sea are evident in the sun-tanned, barefoot, bikini-clad surfers that fill the city, especially just north of Mission Bay, where the small shops, coffee houses and restaurants of the city’s beach area, the heart and soul of Southern California lifestyle, are located.
Historic communities like the Gaslamp Quarter (San Diego’s first commercial district) and Little Italy, which once supported a multi-million-dollar tuna industry, are now centres for performing and visual arts. Once a year, artists in the downtown sector open their studios and galleries to the public as a celebration of the area’s artistic heritage.
Music is an integral part of San Diego’s cultural heritage as well, and it takes centre stage during its historic Gaslamp Quarter festivals. The work of blues and jazz musician Jim Croce is a vibrant part of the city’s heritage. Home to dozens of cultural organisations, writers’ guilds and artist cooperatives, San Diego is one of Southern California’s most important centres for the arts.
San Diego, once a thriving commercial fishing port, is now turning its resources and energy towards tourism with great success. More than 26 million visitors come to San Diego annually from around the world. Its reputation as a top North American travel destination owes as much to its history and multicultural status as to its stunning location or arts scene.
Considered the birthplace of California, San Diego began with a little-known 18th-century Spanish missionary by the name of Father Junipero Serra. In 1769, Serra established the first of several Catholic missions on a grassy knoll, above what was later to become San Diego. By the beginning of the 19th century, Serra had established missions up and down the coast of ‘Alta’ and ‘Baja’ California (Upper and Lower California) – what is now the west coast of the United States and Mexico.
Presidio (‘The Fort’), as California’s first mission is called, remains a testament to San Diego’s Spanish origins. The Fort’s high whitewashed walls, tiled roofs and manicured gardens reflect the flavour and architecture that is still to be found in much of contemporary Southern California.
The Spanish influences remain strong to this day, especially as San Diego is barely an hour’s drive from the Mexico-US border. The evidence of this inextricable connection with its Hispanic beginnings is everywhere, although most notably in cross-border festivals, such as the Cinco de Mayo celebrations, the San Diego International Film Festival and the Latino Film Festival.
Yet this city, which attributes its modest beginnings to the efforts of a single Spanish monk, is also home to more than a dozen world faiths, including Hindu, Islam and Judaism. It is not one single city; it is a patchwork of cultures, neighbourhoods and small, uniquely defined communities – the epitome of the American melting pot.