One Perfect Day in San Diego

The water below the walkway is a marine reserve, and it shows — birds work these cliffs and the sea lions haul out on the rocks in real numbers. Take the path from the Cove toward Children's Pool: half a mile, no admission, open ocean the whole way. The smell comes with it and you stop noticing. Point La Jolla and Boomer Beach are closed year-round, so you watch all of it from above, which was always the better angle anyway.

Breakfast is a fish taco at a counter, and the smoked one is the whole reason to stop here — it goes deeper than a battered fish taco has any right to. Fried and grilled are both on the board if the table wants to run all three, and a ceviche tostada gives somebody a second lane. It moves fast and it costs almost nothing, which is exactly what a seven-stop day needs this early. Order, eat, get back in the car.

Two or three hours, and then leave, or the park eats the day. Walk El Prado end to end, go inside the restored Botanical Building, drop down into Palm Canyon, and pick exactly one interior — the Timken is free and normally open Wednesday through Sunday, which makes it the easy call. Most of what makes Balboa Park is outdoors anyway: the architecture, the gardens, and the fact that you can spend a whole morning in it without paying to get in.

This is the one sit-down meal of the day, and it should start with oysters. The raw bar is what Ironside is for — a restored room on India Street, loud in the way you want at lunch, cocktails that hold their end up, and staff who will build you a dozen if you tell them what you like. The lobster roll is the other order worth making. Park the car when you reach Little Italy and leave it there; nothing else until sunset needs it.

Waterfront Park is where the walking starts, and the harbor does the rest — historic ships tied up along the water, the cruise terminal working behind them, public art, and the Midway at the end of it, looking exactly as large as it is. Going aboard the carrier is a genuinely good half day, just not this one. Walk out, stand under it, turn around. The whole working waterfront, free, in a straight line.

Every pullout along these cliffs works, which is the best thing about them — pick one, set yourself well back from the edge, and let the Pacific do it. Surfers work the breaks directly below. At the low end there are tide pools when the tide cooperates. Get there before the published sunset, because the lot fills first and the color arrives on its own schedule. Free, all of it, and the reason the day runs west.

You order station by station, one meat at a time, and adobada is the one to commit to — that, on tortillas made on site, is the argument for driving this far south at the end of a long day. Send somebody else to the suadero line. Nothing about the system is signposted, so watch the person ahead of you for a minute and you will have it. The salsa and the guacamole do more work than they get credit for, and it stays open very late, which is precisely the point.