My Top 11. #5 and #4

My Top 11.

Characteristics of an Awesome City
(continued)

#5: Fun Stuff to Do Downtown

The best cities have FUN stuff to do downtown!  San Diego didn't let us down.  The whole Gas Lamp Quarter is hopping.  Restaurants, shops, the mall.  Then you've got the bay right there...beautiful boardwalks and ships...a carousel, fudge shops...yeah.

On a Scale of 1 to 10 we give San Diego a 9 for fun stuff to do downtown.

#4: Culture 

After you live in a foreign country you become hyper-aware of culture.  In a week we could hardly get a real taste of Southern California's "culture" but we did get a glimpse.  The city dress code seemed casual, the attitudes were friendly and laid back.  We saw business people, hippies, farmers, fishermen & surfers.

 
One of our favorite mornings in San Diego was spent on Coronado Island.  We drove over the beautiful Coronado Bay Bridge to get there and continued through the quaint downtown area.  We kept driving...and ended up on the other side of the island.  We pulled over to get out at Imperial Beach.  We were going to walk the boardwalk, but instead we discovered this pier:

It was lined with local folks...mostly older Asian people...fishing for sardines!  One cute old lady told us she comes here every day to fish and hang out with her friends and neighbors.  "It beats being bedridden alone in my house," she said.

Catch of the Day: Sardines!

We hung out on the pier for quite a while.  We loved it!  We watched people surfing along the shore, folks reeling in their sardines, pelicans diving for breakfast, and seals popping up everywhere to say hello.

San Diego culture gets a big 1-0 in our book!