UPDATED: Some years ago when my wife and I were in a San Francisco bookstore preparing for a trip up the coast to Oregon, I asked where to find a related guidebook and a very gay sales clerk unabashedly teased me about being non-spontaneous. He'd have clearly relished a reply to the effect that yes, I was just a hellbent and clueless tourista automaton, but I nonetheless bought an Oregon travel guide and it proved a useful orienting tool, as such volumes tend to do. So long as you don't take all the recommedations too seriously. Looking back now, and still a buyer of the occasional travel book, I realize that smart-aleck sales fella had a point.

Disintermediated tourism is the best kind. Don't let anyone set your agenda. Get a map, maybe thumb through a guidebook, and then feel your own way, always stopping to smell the breeze, watch the birds and make sand angels. That last part is learned from my especially ebullient and wonderful daughter, who just turned seven.

Communities, the land itself, and a sense of adventure are far more essential than standard tourist attractions.

Not that the latter are without merit. On a recent trip south from Seattle, I took my kids to the famed San Diego Zoo. As zoos go, it was excellent - if you don't mind paying $110 basic admission for two adults and two kids, plus dealing with serious crowds, do go. The gloriously cognizant and curious meerkats and the stolid hippo, raising its grand snout from underwater only occasionally for oxygen refueling, were my favorites. San Diego's Sea World was an utterly spectacular and fun treat for the whole family. I would highly recommend a visit, especially at off-peak times. We lucked out by going on a low traffic Monday in February, and getting freebie tix from a local friend. Normal cost for two adults and two kids age 10 or older is a whopping $204. That's the same price for season tix, but once is all you really need. Parking and food are extra.

My conclusion: consider the zoo and Sea World, but center your San Diego vacation around other than heavily-trafficked, pricey tourist attractions. Even with special ticket deals, the tyranny of crucial tourist sites should be heartily eschewed, or before you know it you'll be one of the sad, brainwashed many trudging en masse through one after another. The very concept of a "must do" excursion is akin to the claim that some or another important public policy or business decision is a "no-brainer." Such didactic terms are in fact a dead giveaway that if you were to think for yourself, you might just choose otherwise.

So, grasshopper, what is the path to true leisure time jollies for San Diego visitors? I can't truly deign to say, naturellement, but I can share the particulars of my family's unique journey.

Our first full day in San Diego, we took the passenger ferry to the Coronado peninsula from the Embarcadero promenade on the city's downtown waterfront: the ticket booth and entrance are just north of Broadway on Harbor Avenue. As we traversed the harbor the sun was shining, the breeze was fresh, and the city skyline in view, along with the U.S.S. Midway and the Coronado Bridge.

After debarking at the Coronado ferry landing, we got some excellent sandwiches at Boney's Bayside Market on Orange Ave., the main cross-peninsula artery, on which a 20-minute stroll or an even quicker shuttle bus ride leads to the swank downtown and then the Hotel Del Coronado and the Pacific Ocean. Ms. Mom had to get back to the city for work right after lunch so we saw her off at the ferry dock. The kids dug in the sand while I contemplated - and photographed - the perambulations of sandpipers. At no cost.

We finally got going down Orange Ave., toward the village, the hotel and Silver Strand Beach, first passing a plaque in front of the library honoring Coronado residents Adm. James Stockdale (1923-2005) and his wife Sybil for his heroic advocacy for his fellow POWs during the Vietnam War and for her tireless efforts stateside on behalf of Vietnam POWs. Stockdale certainly took some flack for his 1992 debate performance as Ross Perot's Reform Party vice-presidential candidate, asking - perhaps quite sensibly for an audience unfamiliar with him - "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?". The resulting kerfuffle was overhyped and reductive. Here is Adm. James Bond Stockdale's official memorial site. Click on the links therein to his bio, the photo gallery and his publications to get a broader sense of this remarkable man, who called Coronado home.

The peninsula is home not only to an upscale village, ocean beaches, and resorts, but also on the north end, Naval Base Coronado. When Orange Ave. starts to curve to the south, you'll soon see the National Historic Landmark Hotel Del Coronado and its signature red-roofed bell tower. We gravitated toward the public beach behind the hotel, where my junior partners set to work.

Later, on the hotel's front side, we stumbled past the famed 108-year-old Dragon Tree from the Canary Islands. The tree and hotel were featured - along with Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Billy Wilder in supporting roles - in the 1958 film classic "Some Like It Hot."

Here it is.

And again here in the lower right foreground, looking northwest against the splendid backdrop of the Hotel Del's front side.

The public spaces of the hotel are easily explored by non-guests. There's a beautiful cocktail lounge, and tony small shops. Get some superb locally-made ice cream at Moo Time on the lower level plaza, then head back out to the beach, where if you're lucky you'll spot a four-propeller Navy P-3 Orion flying overhead (below).

We also noticed a group of young U.S. Marines being worked over hard by two drill sergeants. Lined up in two teams, they were running a relay race in the sand: sprint; drop and crawl; sprint again; drop and do 20 push-ups; then do it all over again on the way back to the starting point before the next man in line goes.

We spent another hour-plus on the beach playing with kelp and engaging in various other feats of silliness and advanced engineering, before catching a shuttle bus to the ferry, getting back to the hotel, ordering some carry-out barbeque and falling asleep happily exhausted.

More to come - including San Diego's Point Loma/Cabrillo National Monument, the city's Rasta-fied Ocean Beach neighborhood, and adventures in bus riding.

Related: My tourism blogging portfolio, covering excursions in British Columbia, Washington State, Oregon, Northern California, Montana, Chicago, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SAN DIEGO, VACATION, CORONADO, HOTEL DEL CORONADO, JAMES STOCKWELL, TOURISM BLOGGING

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 28, 2007 11:57 PM

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