San Diego: Bright side of life

San Francisco often often overshadows its bigger sister, San Diego. Photo / Supplied

You can understand why - were their city a little less perfectly located, were the climate anything other than unerringly benign, were the alluring parallel universe of the biggest nation in the Spanish-speaking world more than a $2 tram-ride away - the average citizen of California's southernmost city might feel miffed.

Irked enough, perhaps, to sink another happy-hour San Diego Sunset cocktail from the open-air bar that is not merely called Altitude - it is at an altitude of about 9m above street level. From atop the Marriott Hotel, you can watch the day close over the Pacific and consider San Diego's mild exasperation about primacy.

California is the richest state in the wealthiest nation on Earth, and San Diego is among its most opulent locations. Yet the city has to cede to Los Angeles in scale and population and suffers the further irritation that most travellers, when asked to name California's second-biggest city, award the title to the smaller but higher-profile San Francisco. Poor San Diego, tucked down on the Mexican border where California ends.

Yet this is also the place where the state began.

For an exact fix on the birthplace of modern California, go to Point Loma. This rocky outcrop, draped in rough, scrawny vegetation, lies at the tip of the peninsula that curls around anticlockwise from downtown.

Here, on September 28, 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claimed the coast for Spain. From his statue you can get your bearings beautifully. Downtown's steel-and-glass skyline rises in the east. In the foreground, a big naval base: home of America's Pacific Fleet; in the background, the roasted rock that makes California such a scenic dream.

In contrast, Coronado, a low-lying neck of indulgent territory, lies to the south. Beyond it, the busiest international frontier in the world: where America meets Mexico. Northwards, a wave of beaches ripple their way up the coast, with names reverberating from the Beach Boys songbook. And to the west, simply the biggest ocean in the world.

For a few centuries after Cabrillo breezed in, California remained a backwater (gold would not be discovered in seductive quantities until 1849). However, the Spanish became concerned about incursions from the Russians, who regarded the west coast of North America as Siberia's backyard. So Spain dispatched a "sacred expedition" from Mexico to establish roots, and a route, through California.

The man with a mission was Junipero Serra, a Franciscan friar from Mallorca who established a Catholic settlement a couple of kilometres east of the present city centre. You can explore Serra's spartan dwelling, built about 1774 amid a complex of religious buildings that marks one end of California's original highway.

This is the start of the Camino Real, the King's Highway, connecting 21 missions. Each is a day's journey apart on horseback, making it ideal for a fly-ride holiday.

San Diego's global ambitions are most visible in close-by Balboa Park, named after another adventurous Spaniard: Vasco Nuoez de Balboa, the first European to see the Pacific. This extravagant collection of architecture, gardens and wilderness began life as a piece of commercial opportunism.

Park life does not get better than this: San Diego has borrowed the best ideas from around the world - such as Washington DC's concept of a boulevard lined with museums, from fine art to photography - and a copy of the Alcazar Gardens in Seville.

If you prefer to commune with Californian nature, more than 404ha of wilderness provide the chance to get lost in the middle of America's eighth-largest city. And if it's wildlife you're after, you can probably find it here, at a zoo nearly a century old and still one of the best in the world. On the average day, the number of human visitors to San Diego Zoo is more than double the animal resident population - which includes giant pandas, polar bears, orangutans and 800 other species.

If all that makes you keen for a taste of civilisation, head to the downtown Gaslamp Quarter. These 16 blocks, once the stomping ground of a seedier side of life, now comprise the most appealing urban concentration in California. Highlights include the William Heath Davis House, a prefabricated New England home shipped around Cape Horn, which now houses a museum; and the Horton Grand Hotel, which takes you instantly back to the 1930s and includes a Chinese museum in the foyer.

The other handsome redbrick structures in the Gaslamp Quarter no longer deliver prostitution and tattoos; they now house inspirational enterprises such as Le Travel Store, precisely the place to get well kitted out for an adventure south of the border to Tijuana or Tierra del Fuego. And a few doors down, the Cheese Shop deli serves a quick, nutritious and cheap lunch. Back in downtown San Diego you can go shopping - proper, extravagant American shopping - at the Horton Plaza.

International trade is what built San Diego, as you discover at the Maritime Museum, which celebrates the city's seagoing heritage. The main attraction is the Star of India, which was launched on the Isle of Man in 1863 to bring immigrants to the United States and is now the oldest ship in the world with a regular sailing schedule.

An even more impressive piece of maritime history is tied up along the waterfront. The Panama Canal opened the year World War I broke out, but it wasn't until World War II ended that a ship was built that was too big to fit through the canal. And here she is: the aircraft carrier Midway.

For a decade, she was the biggest vessel in the world, facilitating service in Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War. Since 2004, the ship has been one of San Diego's big visitor attractions, giving you the inside story on a giant war machine. You can see what life was like on board for the 4500 men, up to 300 sharing a single dormitory. To match the vessel's vast scale, a gigantic sculpture of a sailor sweeping his sweetheart off her feet stands on the shore.

If you want a pleasurable boat ride from downtown, take the San Diego Bay Ferry to Coronado. Greater San Diego offers a total of 33 public beaches but the most sought-after is the grande-dame bulk of the Hotel del Coronado.

When this hotel first opened in 1888, the emphasis was more on what you would not find than on what you would: `"No extreme heat. No mosquitoes. No malaria." That was the promise at the "Del", as it is known.

It's also famous for being the location of Marilyn Monroe's film, Some Like it Hot.

I've come to realise that out of all the cities in California, I'll take San Diego anytime: an oasis of indulgence between the desert and the ocean.

- INDEPENDENT