San Diego is the country's seventh-largest city, but it has managed to preserve a village-like atmosphere. With its Mediterranean climate, it is a city bathed in sunlight that glows over 320 square miles of hills, canyons, and an unsullied coastline with 30 glistening beaches. The city's cultural appeal certainly matches its visceral beauty. You can catch a downtown trolley and miraculously end up a few minutes later in a foreign country: Mexico.

San Diego's cultural and pastoral epicenter is Balboa Park, with its shaggy eucalyptus trees, looming redwoods, water lilies, and lush green lawns. This dreamlike park is also home to the world's preeminent zoo, where visitors find everything from koalas to giant pandas among more than 4,000 animals living in natural habitats.

Near the entrance to the park is the Old Globe Theatre. Fashioned after Shakespeare's, it is the oldest professional theater in California. The park's main street, the long and charming El Prado, is home to the largest concentration of museums west of the Mississippi, many of them housed within the grandeur of Spanish colonial-style buildings created for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition.

Roam the area south of the Plaza de Panama and discover the lofty Spreckels Organ Pavilion. This 2,000-seat pavilion holds the wondrous 4,445-pipe Spreckels Organ--believed to be the largest outdoor pipe organ in the world. Year-round concerts attract big crowds, and at Christmastime, the pavilion looks magical with a splendid tree and life-size nativity display.

The blue San Diego-Coronado Bridge runs from the waterfront to Coronado. This posh city sits in the middle of the harbor on the tip of a peninsula and is home to North Island U.S. Naval Air Station and the mythic Hotel del Coronado, one of America's largest wooden buildings. Coronado's main thoroughfare is lined with flowers--its restaurants and shops maintain the look of a bygone era.

The colorful Horton Plaza, a glittering multilevel shopping marvel located downtown, stands in delightful contrast to the historic Gaslamp Quarter. This national historic district contains most of San Diego's Victorian commercial buildings. Keep an eye out for the charming mom-and-pop Cuban cigar factory, where lines of men hand roll fragrant stogies.

La Jolla, just north of the city, is California's Monte Carlo. La Jolla is home to a state university, the prestigious Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Salk Institute, and the La Jolla Playhouse--winner of the 1993 Tony Award for outstanding American regional theater. A little closer to San Diego glistens Mission Bay where Sea World, home to dolphins, killer whales, seals, and marine birds, is the main attraction.

Northwest of downtown, Old Town was designated a state historic park in 1968 and consists mostly of a spacious town square surrounded by restored buildings. The true beginnings of San Diego took place overlooking Old Town from atop Presidio Park, where Father Junipero Serra built the Basilica San Diego de Alcala (1769), the first church in what is now the state of California and also the first of his 21 missions. A ruin for years, the basilica was meticulously rebuilt in the 1920s.