Channel home San Diego's climate and personality, both of them warm and relentlessly inviting, never fail to cheer the souls of even the most seasoned and world-weary travelers. Though not exactly compact, San Diego doesn't sprawl with quite the unchecked abandon of many Southern California communities. You might use a car to get among neighborhoods, but much of the city is walkable. 1,400-acre Balboa Park, a repository of some of the finest museums on the West Coast.
Downtown abuts the park on the south and west.
Several established residential neighborhoods crowd the park's borders, including Hillcrest. Hillcrest Eclectic enough to resist classification as a gay ghetto, Hillcrest nevertheless possesses the most visible concentration of San Diego's gay-owned business and homes. You'll detect the healthy buzz of window shopping along 5th Avenue, near the intersection of University Avenue, including the excellent lesbian and gay bookstore, Obelisk . With Hillcrest's growing popularity, many gays and lesbians have settled east and north of here, to University Heights, North Park, Normal Heights and Kensington. Downtown San Diego is a typical business district but for its harborfront, which you can best admire at Seaport Village , a touristy but pleasant stretch of shops and restaurants.