Looking for the best places to visit in San Diego? In this post I will be sharing some of the most iconic places to visit and add to your San Diego travel guide!
Planning a trip to southern California is super exciting! If you’re anything like me, you’re here because you love to research and plan your trip ahead of time. As a travel lover, I am giving you suggestions for your own 2 day San Diego travel guide.
You are going to learn about San Diego landmarks like the San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park, and La Jolla. After learning about these things to do while visiting, you are going to be ready for your next San Diego travel adventure!
This post covers 2 Iconic Days in San Diego | Travel Guide.
Day One: Shopping, San Diego Zoo, and Balboa Park
We arrived in San Diego late Friday night so that we could begin our adventures without having to do any traveling on Saturday. In the morning, we drove to Westfield Mall at UTC. If you aren’t familiar with Westfield Malls, they are located throughout the USA and several of them are located in California. They offer a variety of stores including luxury brands. Westfield Mall at UTC has beautiful outdoor seating areas, cute beverage vendors like Happy Lemon, Blue Bottle Coffee and boba tea shops. If you are a shopaholic, you will definitely want to add a Westfield Mall to your own San Diego travel guide. Of course, we had to start our day with coffee! We ordered the matcha latte, cappuccino, and caffe latte.
Din Tai Fung
As we were walking around, we saw the famous Din Tai Fung restaurant. This place has received Michelin stars for their incredibly delicious xiao long bao “soup” dumplings. Due to their highly recognized food, it is almost impossible to get reservations and you’ll spend hours waiting in line for a table. Lucky for us, we decided we would try anyway right when they opened at 11:00am. They had seating available at the bar. If you are with a small group, this is a great alternative and you can get in right away!
We ordered the following small plates: kurobuta pork xiao long bao, vegetable and kurobuta pork dumplings, sticky rice and kurobuta pork shao mai, vegetable and kurobuta pork buns, chicken spicy wontons, and the green beans. Everything was phenomenal. We especially loved the xiao long bao, spicy wontons, and green beans. Not only can you taste and smell the incredible food, there are viewing windows where you can watch their staff assemble all of the heavenly dumplings and wontons. It was so much fun sharing plates with each other too! I highly recommend this restaurant for an all senses experience! In my opinion, it’s best to go to Din Tai Fung with a group so that you can order more plates and share them!
San Diego Zoo
After lunch and doing a little shopping, we made our way to the San Diego Zoo! This place is HUGE and you could easily spend more than a day here. We opted for the 1-day pass tickets which included a guided bus tour. We chose to hop on the bus first so we could become familiar with the layout of the zoo, see some of the animals from the comfort of our seats, and then make plans to revisit our favorites or animals that we weren’t able to see by bus. The guided bus tour boards near the zoo entrance, takes 35 minutes, is narrated, and stops at major exhibits like the elephants and bears. My absolute favorite animal that we saw was the red panda. They are sooo cute! I wish I could pick one up and hug it!
Balboa Park
From the zoo, we drove to Balboa Park. An iconic location for any San Diego travel guide, Balboa Park has so much to offer. With beautiful Spanish architecture, ponds, gardens, street performers, and food vendors, it’s a great place to spend an afternoon. There is a tram available to hop on from all the area parking lots, so as not to have to walk so much. We used this free tram as a way to see the entire park! If we had more time, I would have loved to check out the international cottages, tea pavilion, and Prado restaurant.
Not far from the San Diego Zoo is the Northpark neighborhood. Known for food, breweries, and the arts, Northpark offers many unique restaurants! For dinner, we opted for URBN Pizza, a brewery that also serves up delicious and unique New Haven style pizza. They offer a variety of signature pizzas, build your own, and other pub food like chicken wings, brussel sprouts, italian bean dip, and salad. We decided we had to order what they’re most famous for: the clam pizza, mashed potato and bacon pizza, as well as the vegan pizza. The pizzas may look huge, but because of their super thin crust, it’s easy for one person to eat at least 4 large slices! As weird as these flavors may sound, they were absolutely delicious! My favorite was the mashed potato and bacon pizza. If you’re feeling adventurous, I highly recommend checking this place out!
Extraordinary Desserts
We ended the day with dessert from Extraordinary Desserts. With multiple locations, Extraordinary Desserts is not to be missed. They offer incredibly extravagant, delicious, and one of a kind cakes and pastries. The menu varies daily and by location. When you enter the store, you’ll be greeted by a large window case displaying all of the perfectly presented desserts. As you wait in line, don’t forget what you want to order! It’s not uncommon to snap a picture of what you want so that you’ll remember once you get up to the ordering counter. You can enjoy the desserts in store or for take out.
We ordered the waikiki cake, blood orange ricotta cake, bread pudding, and banana pudding. My favorite was the blood orange ricotta cake. I recommend ordering a fruit based cake rather than chocolate, as they can be incredibly rich. The portions are large, so be ready to indulge or share with a friend!
Day Two: La Jolla and Downtown San Diego
On our second day of touring San Diego, we drove down to the coast and enjoyed sunny La Jolla. This cute, seaside village offers shopping, dining, incredible ocean views, and plenty of sea lion sightings.
Our first stop was lunch at Trilogy Sanctuary. This restaurant is a rooftop, vegan cafe also offering ariel and yoga classes. The view from the rooftop is beautiful and the food is not to be missed. I would definitely add this place to your San Diego travel guide. We ordered the jackfruit lettuce wraps, green bowl, and lentil bowl. Everything was incredible, and so healthy! They also offer breakfast, smoothies, and acai bowls. It was so nice to sit outside and enjoy the view, perfect temperature, and sunshine.
After filling our bellies, we strolled along Girard Avenue and did a little more shopping. We had to check out Vuori, a coastal California inspired performance wear clothing brand that stands by sustainability and ethical manufacturing. Their sweatpants and yoga leggings are made with the softest material! We window shopped through some other stores as we made our way down to the Cove.
La Jolla Cove
Iconic La Jolla Cove is where you’ll find all of the sea lions and seals, and maybe even some dolphins! There are plenty of food vendors too. Enjoy a cup of fruit while sitting along the coast and enjoy the ocean breeze. The sea lions are so fun to watch. Near the cove, there is a place called The Cave Store, offering tours of a cave near the ocean. We didn’t have a chance to do this tour, but it sounded super cool! If you plan to do the tour, be sure to wear good, non-slip shoes as the steps leading to the cave can be very slippery.
Once we got our fix of stunning La Jolla, we made our way back to downtown San Diego for dinner. We made reservations for Sovereign Modern Thai. This restaurant received a Michelin star in 2021! To start, we ordered the spring rolls and Northern Thai spicy beef soup. The spring rolls were some of the best I’ve ever had and the soup was delicious. For our main meal, we ordered Thai curry noodles and grilled angus new york steak fried rice. The curry noodles were incredible and the steak on the fried rice was cooked to perfection. Another restaurant that I highly recommend adding to your San Diego travel guide. We could not stop talking about this place!
Our third day in San Diego, was actually spent about an hour and a half away, in Anaheim, for you guessed, it Disneyland!
We loved every minute of our short, iconic San Diego trip. We managed to see many of the most famous landmarks in San Diego and immersed ourselves in cultural cuisines. Please let me know in the comments below what you would add to your San Diego travel guide!
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