San Diego, California, is sunny and mild—not just in weather, but in personality, as well. This is a place where the people are friendly and the sun shines more than 300 days a year. To top it off, San Diego is blessed with considerable natural beauty: broad, gorgeous beaches on its west side, creviced canyons in the east, and sweet-smelling tropical flowers everywhere.
A quintessential U.S. Navy town, San Diego has also boomed in recent years. The trendy downtown and Gaslamp Quarter, plus such nearby attractions as Balboa Park, continue to pull in locals and tourists alike.
North of downtown San Diego, in La Jolla, prestigious research institutes with names such as Salk and Scripps attract top researchers, while the glorious beaches draw surfers and sun-worshippers in droves. Unfortunately, this growth has brought traffic—San Diego highway congestion can rival Los Angeles during morning and evening rush hours.
The greater San Diego area is actually a series of individual towns, each with its own personality. La Jolla is San Diego's answer to Beverly Hills. Coronado, a pristine stretch of land connected to downtown by the Coronado Bay Bridge, has the palatial Hotel del Coronado and broad avenues running past Victorian homes; it is also home to several aircraft carriers.
Then there are San Diego's beaches: Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, La Jolla Beach, La Jolla Shores, Del Mar and many more.
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