When Patrick and Sheila Corey flew in from Portland, Maine for a week-long visit, we finally had a good excuse to revisit some of our favorite San Diego spots — and a few we had been meaning to get to. Over several days we made it out to the Safari Park in Escondido, Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, the USS Midway downtown, Queen Califia’s Magical Circle, the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park, and a handful of our favorite local places for food and drinks in between. Showing visitors around a place you love has a way of reminding you why you love it.
San Diego Zoo & Safari Park
Patrick and Sheila’s first full day gave us a natural excuse to head out to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido, about 35 miles northeast of the city. Unlike a traditional zoo, the Safari Park puts animals in vast open-range habitats that genuinely look like the African and Asian landscapes they came from — giraffes, rhinos, and antelope sharing the same savanna, big cats in enclosures designed around natural behavior rather than just visitor viewing convenience. Sandy and I have been here enough times that we have our preferred routes, but Patrick and Sheila set the pace and we followed their lead.
Patrick kept stopping whenever something unexpected came into view, which was often. The gorillas had him transfixed — one big male was positioned close to the glass and appeared to be sizing up the crowd with studied indifference. The tigers were active, which isn’t always guaranteed on a warm day, so Sandy got some good shots. The Africa Tram is worth doing if you have time — it takes you through the sweeping savanna habitat at a scale that really only makes sense from that vantage point.
The cheetahs were pacing when we passed — that coiled, restless energy that’s hard to look away from. The elephant habitat, Denny Sanford Elephant Valley, is one of the more recent additions and genuinely impressive in scale. The lions were lounging in the sun, which is their default, but Sandy caught a good shot in a brief moment of alertness.
A mother kangaroo and her joey.
The park is excellent for birding. Flamingos, Marabou stork, California condor, and turkey vulture all in one afternoon.
Bald eagle, burrowing owl, and toco toucan.
The four of us at the Safari Park. This pelican decided to pose in an unusual position for the camera. A water lily and hedgehog cactus both in bloom.
Good to Know
The Safari Park is at 15500 San Pasqual Valley Road, Escondido. Hours and admission pricing vary by season and are separate from the San Diego Zoo — check sdzsafaripark.org before you go. Parking is an additional fee. If you want to do the Africa Tram or any of the guided wildlife tours, those book up — reserve ahead. The park is large and the terrain is hilly; comfortable shoes and water are essential in summer. Plan for a full day.
Birch Aquarium, La Jolla
The approach to Birch Aquarium tells you right away you’re somewhere special — you drive up through the UCSD campus and arrive on a hill above the Pacific with Scripps Pier stretching out below you before you’ve even bought a ticket. The aquarium is the public face of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, so the exhibits lean toward genuine science rather than pure entertainment, and the location is one of the better coastal viewpoints in La Jolla.
The kelp forest exhibit is the centerpiece for good reason — a floor-to-ceiling tank with fish moving through in that three-dimensional, unhurried way that’s hard to stop watching. Patrick, who does not think of himself as a fish person, stood in front of it for a long time without apologizing for it.
The tropical tanks are dense with color — queen angelfish, yellow tang, sergeant majors, and dozens of other species. Sandy had the camera working steadily through this entire section.
One of the aquarium’s signature animals is the leafy seadragon — a relative of the seahorse covered in elaborate leaf-like appendages that serve as camouflage in underwater vegetation. It’s exactly the kind of thing that makes you realize how genuinely strange marine life is once you stop taking it for granted.
The little blue penguin exhibit was a hit with the whole group. These are the world’s smallest penguin species, native to Australia and New Zealand, and they are energetic and social enough that you can watch them for longer than you planned. Daily feedings are worth timing your visit around.
Outside, the tide pool area lets you touch sea stars, sea cucumbers, and hermit crabs with staff nearby to answer questions. It’s designed with kids in mind but the adults in our group spent just as much time at it as any child we saw that day.
The jellyfish tank is a perennial favorite — there is something about watching them drift that is genuinely calming. The grouper, on the other hand, just looks like it has things figured out.
Birch Aquarium is smaller than Monterey Bay Aquarium, but the location, the quality of the exhibits, and the Scripps connection make it well worth a morning. During certain times of year you may spot gray whales or dolphins from the outdoor overlooks — we didn’t, but the view is worth stopping for regardless.
Good to Know
Birch Aquarium is at 2300 Expedition Way, La Jolla, on the UCSD campus off North Torrey Pines Road. Open daily 9am–5pm. Timed-entry tickets are recommended for weekends and holidays — book in advance at aquarium.ucsd.edu. Parking on-site is free for a limited time per visit. Plan for 2–3 hours.
Queen Califia’s Magical Circle
Queen Califia’s Magical Circle had been on our list for too long, and Patrick and Sheila’s visit finally pushed us to go. It’s inside Kit Carson Park in Escondido — easy to miss if you’re not looking — a sculpture garden created by French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle as her final major international project and the only American sculpture garden she ever designed. Saint Phalle passed away in 2002 before the project was completed; the garden opened in 2003 and stands as a lasting tribute to her work.
The garden draws on the legend of Queen Califia, a mythical Black warrior queen from a 16th-century Spanish novel whose story eventually gave California its name. Saint Phalle used that legend as a framework for an outdoor circular plaza filled with enormous mosaic sculptures — the central figure of Queen Califia herself seated on a five-legged eagle, surrounded by serpents, totems, and figures drawing from Native American traditions, Mexican folk art, and California’s cultural history. Every surface is covered in ceramic tile, mirror, and glass mosaic that catches the light differently depending on where you’re standing.
The entrance is a winding mosaic snake wall that forms a maze-like passage into the circular plaza. Coming through it and seeing the scale of the sculptures for the first time is a genuine surprise — bigger than you expect. Sandy brought Jake the dog, which turns out to be allowed, and he had strong opinions about the sculptures.
The whole place encourages you to get close and move through rather than observe from a distance. Winding pathways and sculptural benches draw you from one piece to the next, and the mosaics reveal new details the longer you look — an expression on a figure’s face, a pattern hidden in what looked like a solid-colored section. Patrick, the painter in the group, spent more time here than anywhere else all week.
Admission is free. The garden has limited hours — typically Tuesday and Thursday mornings and the second and fourth Saturdays of each month, with some seasonal variation — and closes temporarily after rain to protect the mosaics. Check the City of Escondido’s parks website before you go since hours can vary. It is one of those places that earns the word “unexpected” without overpromising anything.
Bernardo Winery
Lunch one day was at Bernardo Winery in Poway — San Diego County’s oldest continuously operating winery, established in 1889 and still family-owned by the Rizzo family since 1927. We had been wanting to bring Patrick and Sheila here because it’s one of those places that takes an afternoon to do properly. We started with pizza from their wood-fired kitchen, which is better than it needs to be, eaten in the outdoor courtyard under mature trees with the relaxed ambiance of somewhere that has been welcoming visitors for over a century.
After lunch we wandered through the Village Shops — a collection of locally owned boutiques and artisan studios in the historic buildings around the courtyard. Jewelry, pottery, home décor, specialty foods, candles, and artwork — the kind of shops worth browsing without any particular agenda. You’re welcome to carry a glass of wine while you walk through them, which tells you everything about the general pace of the place.
The winery produces estate wines from San Diego County grapes and the tasting room is worth at least a half hour. The property has an interesting history — it survived Prohibition by producing sacramental wine for churches, which allowed it to keep operating while most others closed. The grounds feel genuinely old in a way that most of Southern California doesn’t, and throughout the year they host festivals, live music, and an art fair that draws a loyal crowd of locals. What started as a quick lunch stretched into most of the afternoon without anyone complaining about it.
USS Midway Museum
Michael had been aboard the USS Midway before, but Patrick and Sheila hadn’t, and it felt like a natural stop for a group that includes a history buff and a former military family. The carrier is moored on the Embarcadero and from the water it still looks impossibly large — commissioned in 1945 as the biggest ship in the world at the time, and it reads that way even now. The museum opened in 2004 and today is one of San Diego’s most visited attractions.
The flight deck is where most people start, and the scale of it makes more sense in person than in any photograph — two dozen-plus restored military aircraft spread across what is essentially a floating runway, with the San Diego skyline behind you and the harbor open on the other side. The aircraft range from WWII-era fighters through Cold War jets and helicopters, and many have open cockpits you can climb into.
Patrick and Sheila both climbed into cockpits, which Patrick considered undignified for approximately three seconds before deciding it was completely fine. The docents throughout the ship are largely veterans and former crew, and their firsthand stories are the best part of any section — the kind of context no exhibit panel can replicate. More than 4,500 crew members once lived and worked aboard this ship, and walking through the below-decks spaces — crew quarters, galley, medical bay, engine room, post office — gives you a real sense of what that meant.
The self-guided audio tour is narrated by former Midway sailors and is included with admission. We used it and found it genuinely useful for keeping the history in order as you move through the ship.
The medical bay is one of the more memorable below-decks spaces — everything staged as if in use, which is either compelling or unsettling depending on your tolerance for that kind of realism. Sandy photographed it from a porthole, which felt like the right framing for it.
Good to Know
The USS Midway Museum is at 910 N. Harbor Drive, San Diego, on the Embarcadero waterfront. Open daily 10am–5pm, last admission at 4pm; closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. Check midway.org for current admission pricing. Parking is available at several waterfront lots nearby. Plan for at least three hours — comfortable shoes are essential, as the tour covers multiple deck levels with ladders and low passageways. The museum is within walking distance of Seaport Village and the Maritime Museum of San Diego.
Torrey Pines Gliderport
The Torrey Pines Gliderport sits at the edge of the La Jolla cliffs above Black’s Beach, a short distance from the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve we had visited the month before. Even if paragliding is not on your itinerary, the views from the clifftops are worth stopping for on their own. We drove up with Patrick and Sheila mostly to show them the coastal perspective from up high, and ended up staying much longer than planned.
We spent the time watching the pilots launch into the ocean breeze and ride the coastal updrafts — floating for extended periods, sometimes well above the clifftops. It’s quiet up here aside from the wind, and the combination of the views and the gliders drifting overhead in silence is hard to find elsewhere in the county. The gliderport has been operating for decades and is one of the premier free-flight sites in the country.
Tandem paragliding and hang gliding flights are available with certified instructors if you want to actually go up. There’s also a café at the cliff edge — a good place to sit with something cold and watch the wings pass above you. Patrick watched. He claims he considered the tandem flight seriously.
The views north and south along the coast from up here put the whole stretch of San Diego shoreline in context. One of the better viewpoints we know of in the county.
Japanese Friendship Garden, Balboa Park
Balboa Park keeps rewarding return visits, and Patrick and Sheila’s trip gave us a good excuse to finally spend proper time in the Japanese Friendship Garden. Designed to celebrate San Diego’s sister-city relationship with Yokohama, the garden blends traditional Japanese landscaping with Southern California’s natural setting — koi ponds, stone lanterns, waterfalls, bonsai displays, and winding paths through carefully maintained plantings. It’s quieter than most of Balboa Park, which is much of the appeal.
We moved through it at a slow pace, which is the right pace. The koi ponds catch the light in interesting ways, and the sound of the water shifts as you move from the stream sections to the falls to the still pools. Sandy and Patrick both had cameras out and were keeping pace with each other, which made everything take longer and was entirely worth it.
The garden also has traditional Japanese architecture, rotating bonsai displays, and seasonal plantings that change throughout the year. Cultural programs and events run year-round. We were there on a quiet weekday and had most of the paths to ourselves, which felt like a gift in the middle of one of San Diego’s busiest parks.
There is a paid admission for the garden within the otherwise largely free Balboa Park — worth it. Two hours is plenty for a thorough visit, though if you are inclined to sit by the koi pond for a while, no one is rushing you.
Just outside the garden: a large outdoor pipe organ, and — around the next corner — a sculpture of Jesus on a surfboard. Balboa Park contains multitudes.
New English Brewing, Sorrento Valley
New English Brewing is one of our go-to San Diego craft breweries, especially for groups where not everyone is an IPA devotee. The brewery was founded in 2007 by Simon Lacey, who moved from England to San Diego and built it around a broader range of styles than most local breweries offer — lagers, English ales, stouts, porters, Belgians, sours, and yes, IPAs. Something for everyone, and they do all of it well.
Located in Sorrento Valley, the tasting room has two spaces — The Pub and the Barrel Room — plus a large outdoor patio with roll-up garage doors when the weather cooperates. It’s family-friendly and dog-friendly, and while there’s no kitchen on-site you can bring food in or order from nearby. Patrick had strong opinions about lagers and found their version satisfying. Sheila worked her way through the lighter end of the menu. Sandy had two of the Zumbar Chocolate Coffee Imperial Stout, brewed in collaboration with San Diego’s Zumbar Coffee & Tea — rich with coffee and dark chocolate, and one of the better beers in the city regardless of style.
New English has quietly built a reputation as one of San Diego’s underrated breweries — consistently good, unpretentious, and willing to make beers that aren’t chasing whatever the current trend is. In a county with over 150 breweries, that counts for a lot.
James Huntley
We made time one afternoon to visit Michael’s father Jim at his assisted living facility in Escondido. Jim has painted for many years, and Patrick — also a painter — made the most of it: the two of them spent time going through a few of Jim’s paintings on display and talking about technique, subject matter, and what life in Portland was like. It was a low-key afternoon that ended up being one of the quiet highlights of the week.
Afterward we went to Stone Brewing in Escondido for cold beer and lunch — a good end to that particular afternoon.
A good sunset to close out the trip.
