Focus: Balboa Park

It’s known as the Smithsonian of the West for a reason: San Diego’s Balboa Park has a wide range of fascinating institutions, with specialties that will appeal to almost any kind of curious mind.

The San Diego Museum of Art is only one of Balboa Park’s many fine art museums, but as the largest and oldest, it’s a good place to start. The collection features pieces from 5,000 B.C. to present day, all housed behind an intricate facade designed to mimic a Spanish cathedral. The free-admission Timken Museum of Art offers a similar range of pieces in a smaller space. In the Museum of Photographic Arts, visitors can gaze on the more than 24,000 pictures in the permanent collection, or head to Mingei International Museum, which celebrates beauty in ordinary objects like textiles and bowls.

If you’d like to visit an actual artist’s studio—or better yet, several of them—Balboa Park is home to the Spanish Village Art Center, a picturesque cluster of building and courtyards originally constructed to resemble a charming town in Spain in 1935 for the second California Exposition. Today it houses studio and gallery space for more than 250 local artists of every imaginable discipline: painters, sculptors, metalsmiths, mixed-media artists, photographers, glassblowers, and many more. You can stroll through shows and sales, watch demonstrations, and observe the artists at work; the studios are open and questions are encouraged.

Those curious about engineering will appreciate the handful of park museums dedicated to how stuff works. The San Diego Air & Space Museum houses an impressive number of original and replica aircraft—Apollo 9, Wright Glider, and Super Marine Spitfire, to name a few—which help visitors understand the wonder of flight. Gearheads should check out the San Diego Automotive Museum, which has a 1947 Cadillac that still holds the record for driving from San Diego to New York and back—without stopping. For a better understanding of the physics behind machines, head to the Fleet Science Center for interactive exhibits that are good for kids (and adults) of all ages, while kids and train spotters will also love the Model Railroad Museum. Some kids would argue, too, that the park’s 1910 Herschell-Spillman Carousel, near the Activity Center, is a museum in itself. 

Two more can’t-miss stops include the San Diego Natural History Museum, which allows visitors to channel their inner archaeologist with dinosaur skeletons and mastodon bones. The truly unique San Diego Museum of Man focuses on one of earth’s most peculiar creatures with rotating exhibits on animal cohabitation, cannibalism, and the invention of mythical beasts.

Useful info: As a public park, entrance to Balboa Park is free, but tickets to the various museums, performance venues, tours, etc. vary, as do their hours of operation. Visit the site for details and a useful map. The Balboa Park Explorer Pass, a pass with one-day, one-week, and one-year options is available. The park also has an app to help you make the most of your visit.

The history of Balboa Park stretches all the way back to 1835, so it’s little wonder that some nutty stuff has gone down within its 1,200 acres. Did you know, for instance, that Zoro Garden was once the site of a nudist colony, or that in the 1980s, orangutans escaped from the San Diego Zoo a total of nine times? A number of tours offered within the park highlight the park’s fun tidbits while also giving visitors a closer connection to San Diego’s fascinating park.

For an excellent overview, start at the Balboa Park Visitors Center (find it on this map). Ninety-minute, self-guided audio tours are available for purchase (both adult and children’s versions), while free ranger-lead walking tours embark from the center every Sunday. The park also hosts specialized tours focusing on specific areas of interests. There’s an Architectural Heritage Tour, held on the first Friday of each month, which highlights the way the park introduced the Spanish Colonial Revival style to Southern California. Garden fans, meanwhile, can enjoy a 45-minute Botanical Tour every third Friday. Or go on a free docent-led Japanese Friendship Garden Tour of the park’s lower 4.5-acre canyon expansion area. Check the tour schedule to time your visit. Tours of the California Tower, or bell tower, will not be offered for much of 2019 while the tower is receives a seismic retrofit. Work is expected to be completed by January of 2020.

If you want to get a workout along the way, try the 3.2-mile trail run offered by City Running Tours(which includes an after-dark option on Saturday). If you prefer a sweat-free experience, We Love Tourists offers a Segway tour, as well as ebike tours and even tours with a focus on food. Or take a seat and enjoy the view with San Diego Trolley Tours, which stops at various museums along the loop.

When it comes to dining while at Balboa Park, forget everything you know about “park food.” In fact, some of San Diego’s most exciting restaurants can be found inside this massive urban green space.

The courtyard in the heart of the park, for instance, is not only the center point for many of the park’s museums, but it also offers a romantic backdrop for Balboa’s very best food. Panama 66 pours a rotating tap of 20-plus San Diego brews along with locally sourced salads and sandwiches. The open dining room, tucked inside a sculpture garden, hosts live music every Wednesday–Saturday night. If you’re after high-end food and service, head to The Prado at Balboa Park where you can enjoy whimsical Spanish decor, inventive cocktails, and creative entrées—think pan-seared duck breast with quinoa fried rice and tangerine gastrique.

Balboa Park’s museums and gardens keep the food charmingly on-theme. Hungry animal watchers can climb the steps to Albert’s Restaurant at the San Diego Zoo for a treetop meal next to a private waterfall. Enjoy a tea service—the loose-leaf menu is massive—with your noodle soup at the bamboo Tea Pavilion inside the Japanese Friendship Garden. The Flight Path Grill, housed in the San Diego Air & Space Museum, keeps the meals simple—pizza and salads—but the real attraction is the buzz of engines swooping low on their way to San Diego International Airport, just a few short miles west.

As you plan your visit, keep an eye out for special food-themed events. Depending on the season, you might find a row of food trucks on the Plaza de Panama. Every Friday in the summer (and for a week during the holidays), more than a dozen trucks serving everything from wood-fired pizza to boba tea make for a pop-up food court. On Sunday afternoons between March and October, stroll the lawn among the little houses at the House of Pacific Relations International Cottages and you can nosh on a variety of international tidbits from Austria to Peru, Turkey, and Korea.

Balboa Park’s calendar is filled with festivals, tours, concerts, and special events nearly every weekend of the year—and some events are worth building a whole trip around.

Holidays are huge in San Diego’s emerald gem. December Nights, held the first weekend of the month, features special performances and light displays, unique shopping in the Starlight Winter Marketplace, and free admission to any museum. Balboa Park also goes big for Halloween: The Haunted Trail challenges the courage of hikers with a mile of terrifying sights, while kid-friendly Halloween Family Day has carnival games, craft projects, and a rooftop pumpkin drop from the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

San Diego has a rich history of supporting diverse cultures, which is on full display in May during Balboa’s annual Ethnic Food Fair. Held at the International Cottages, representatives from nearly 40 countries set up shop to serve up local delicacies along with song and dance on the main stage. In February, the Chinese New Year Festival celebrates with a lion dance, calligraphy lessons, steamed dumplings, and milk tea. Each March, the Japanese Friendship Garden welcomes spring with the Cherry Blossom Festival, when visitors flock to the gardens to see the pink blooms in all their glory, while enjoying cultural performances and sake tastings.

The heart of June’s San Diego LGBTQ Pride weekend is the two-day festival in Balboa Park. Often cited as the largest civic event in the city, more than 200,000 participants enjoy live music, delicious food, and an inclusive community.