National Geographic Traveller UK 03.2020

British Airways lies direct from

Heathrow from £389 return. Near Little

Italy, The Guild Hotel has doubles from

$229 (£174), room only. The sprawling

Catamaran Resort Hotel, on Paciic

Beach, has doubles from $126 (£96),

room only. ba.com theguildhotel.com

catamaranresort.com

The beaches
On Coronado, located on a sand-spit next to
Downtown, I’ve squished my feet into the
sotest sand outside the Hotel del Coronado,
a white Victorian clapboard grande dame. At
chi-chi Paciic Beach, I’ve strolled along the
bar-lined boardwalk and down the bungalow-
dotted pier. At the end, people are ishing.
Mackerel, sea bass and stingrays are all down
in the depths, a local tells me. Although with
the latter, “usually we take a photo, give it a
kiss and throw it back in the water”.
There’s only one beach Judy wants to take
me to, though: Ocean Beach. A bit hippy, a bit
grungy, if you’re looking for classic California
viewed through a Beach Boys ilter, this is it.
“Ocean Beach is about simple living
and conscious community — it’s where
you experience what it means to be a free
spirit,” Gretchen Michelle Petrina explains
at her shop, The Holistic Science Company,
which sells organic, vegan and essential oil-
crammed healing products. Next to the Ocean
Beach shop is a bungalow covered in placards.
‘OB is like fungus, it grows on you’, says one.
‘OB: where the circus is always in town!’ reads

another. “I used to love Ocean Beach,” sighs

Judy. “But then everyone got younger and

drunker, and I became the grandma.”

From the slightly scraggy beach, where a

guy is ofering chakra balancing for $25 (£19),

we walk up Newport Avenue, the neon-lit

main drag, past retro cocktail joint Tony’s

Martini Bar and burger joint Hodad’s to the

Ocean Beach Antique Mall — a whopping

building divided into dozens of individual

stalls, selling everything from vintage Cali

postcards to retro tiki statues. Back in the

car, Judy drives over the roller coaster hills

— skinny palm trees marking out the shape

of the coastline — to Sunset Clifs, whose

crumbling, ruddy headland is San Diegans’

favourite place to catch the setting sun.

Judy has to scoot of to the Women’s

Museum of California, but I return solo at

sunset. The views run up the coast to La Jolla

and down to the Coronado Islands of Mexico.

The ocean is silvery, and the waves break

mutely against the clifs. When the sun sets,

though, the water starts slapping on the rock,

and the circling gulls start screeching. They

don’t want it to end, clearly. Neither do I.

MORE INFO

Little Italy. littleitalysd.com

Salt & Straw. saltandstraw.com

Filippi’s Pizza Grotto.

realcheesepizza.com

Cafe 222. cafe222.com

Davis-Horton House.

gaslampfoundation.org

Artelexia. artelexia.com

Pigment. shoppigment.com

Mike Hess Brewing.

mikehessbrewing.com

Big Kitchen Cafe. judysbigkitchen.com

Hotel del Coronado. hoteldel.com

The Holistic Science Company.

theholisticscienceco.com

Ocean Beach Antique Mall.

antiquesinsandiego.com

Las Cuatro Milpas.

las-cuatro-milpas.com

Puesto. eatpuesto.com

Stone Brewing Co. stonebrewing.com

Women’s Museum of California.

womensmuseumca.org

San Diego Museum of Man.

museumofman.org

Food and drink recommendations.

sandiego.eat.com

sandiego.org

FROM LEFT: Folks Arts

Rare Records; Queen

Bee Market, San Diego’s

beloved bi-annual artisan

market; steps down to

Ocean Beach, known

for its hippy spirit and

Californian good looks

NEIGHBOURHOOD

March 2020 59