California Vacation Guide 2015 - 16

BALBOA PARK

Bea Evenson Fountain

BEST OF BALBOA
Best zoo time
Mondays, when museums are closed
(and people think the zoo is too)
Best play space
Zoro Garden-paths, tree roots for scrambling, and spring and summer butterﬂies
Best reason to dance
Free concerts at Spreckels Organ Pavilion
Best date night
Prado Restaurant's outdoor patio
Best mini-trip to Spain
Alcazar Garden, echoing similar
gardens in Seville
Best peace-out
Japanese Friendship Garden
Best place to feel like you're in a
Renoir painting
Lily pond fronting the lath-style
Botanical Building

Casa del Prado
Theatre

San Diego Zoo

Old World-style El Prado, past the buskers playing accordions, lutes, saxophones,
and banjos, past the botanical garden's
flower-trimmed lath house and pond filled
with lilies and turtles and fish. West, past
the shady arches of the Spanish-MexicanMoorish buildings constructed for the
1915 Panama-California Exposition and
now housing museums filled with fine art,
photography, automobiles and aircraft.
16 | VISITCALIFORNIA.COM

FINALLY, THE BELL TOWER
AND SHAKESPEARE

Y

ears passed. The pendulum knocked
down more dominos. When the boys'
strides and energy were finally big
enough to carry us to the base of the California Building, its iron staircase curling skyward
to a weather vane shaped like a classic tall
ship, the boys were old enough to doubt me

Best place to see masterpieces for free
Timken Museum of Art
Best time travel to 1905
Marston House Museum & Gardens
Best place for barefoot children
Bea Evenson Fountain (it welcomes
splashing), east end of El Prado

when I said plays by William Shakespeare
and other classic playwrights at the park's
Old Globe theater would be magical, fantastic, or at least better than they thought.
They didn't believe me. My husband
and I bribed them with hot chocolate and
brownies, and, in the darkness wrapping
the theater's outdoor stage, the boys saw
the magic of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Cyrano and Roxanne, Shylock and
Portia. The zoo was so close we could hear
peacocks calling to each other beyond the
stage, and I felt the same thing I felt beside
the swings in Pepper Park: This is what
I wanted you to know, and this is what I
wanted you to be. -LAURA MCNEAL

More at visitcalifornia.com/top-parks

DAVE LAURIDSEN (3)

Honestly though, until the boys were
10, we never got farther than the San
Diego Model Railroad Museum, housed
in Casa de Balboa. The largest operating
model railroad museum in the world, it's
a place where old men in overalls make
tiny trains move past green mountains, big
desert vistas, and small human dramas: the
motorcycle cop waiting to catch dragracing cars, the upended truck full of fleasize chickens, the wedding party on the steps
of the Mexican church, the whale in the bay,
and the drive-in movie theater showing a
real clip of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.
http://www.visitcalifornia.com/top-parks http://www.VISITCALIFORNIA.COM
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of California Vacation Guide 2015
