Where to Stay in San Diego, by Vibe

You can arrive, eat well, and leave again without ever getting into a car. The County Center/Little Italy platform is on both the Blue and the Green line, Santa Fe Depot puts the COASTER and Amtrak within reach, and Route 992 runs from the airport terminals into the same downtown corridor. Between trains there are restaurants the length of India Street and a piazza that keeps its chairs out all evening. Wake up, walk to coffee, and let the day build from there.

This is the water-facing side of Downtown, where the Star of India is tied up at the Maritime Museum and the bay does the work a street grid does everywhere else. Book it when the fixed points of your trip are already on the water — the Convention Center, a night at the Rady Shell, a cruise, the museums strung along the Embarcadero. The district has four Trolley platforms, so a closed street or a packed train never ends the plan. Walk out to the water at dusk; the whole place is pointed at it.

Victorian-era blocks, an arched sign lit up over the entrance, and Fifth Avenue running straight through the middle. This is where you stay when the evening is the reason for the trip: a late dinner, a show, a convention that ends at the bar, a ballgame a few blocks east. Gaslamp Quarter and Fifth Avenue both have Trolley platforms inside the district, so getting back from anywhere downtown is a short ride and a shorter walk. The whole night stays on foot.

A 4,600-acre aquatic park with 27 miles of shoreline, most of it calm, all of it flat, and threaded with inlets and small islands. The shoreline curls, so the water directly outside your room is the water you will actually use. What follows is the easiest family week in the county: bikes on the path in the morning, boards and boats in the afternoon, and a swim in sight of the room before dinner.

The sand here actually sparkles — there is mica in it — and it runs the length of Ocean Boulevard with fine homes on one side and the Hotel del Coronado anchoring the south end. Low tide opens the tidepools; the wide flat stretch is where the volleyball happens. Orange Avenue takes care of the rest of the day with shops, restaurants, and the local brewery. Rent a bike the first morning; the island is small enough that you will stop thinking about the car by the second.

Palm-lined streets, coastal shops, and restaurants sitting above a stretch of coast that is genuinely spectacular — the village is surrounded on three sides by water and backed by the slope of Mount Soledad, which is why so many of these walks end at a view. The Cove is the anchor. The Playhouse, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Birch Aquarium give the evenings somewhere to go. Stay inside the village and a whole day can happen on foot.

Stay here on the second trip, when you want to live in a neighborhood instead of visiting one. The corner of 30th and University is the middle of it: more than 15 breweries and tasting rooms inside a walk, taco counters and full restaurants sharing the same blocks, murals across the business walls, and a 1929 theater that came back in 2005 as a music venue. The farmers market takes the street Thursday afternoons, and a good day here never leaves the neighborhood.

The boardwalk is the reason to be here: a long flat run right along the sand, with bike rentals on it and Crystal Pier standing in the middle. Garnet Avenue comes down to meet the beach and brings the bars and the late hours with it. Down by Garnet you are in the middle of the night; up toward Law and Diamond there are lifeguards, bathrooms, and the same ocean at a lower volume.

Compact, flat, and built around a historic main-street grid that runs down toward the sand — the Village is the walkable piece of a very large city. The COASTER platform is on State Street, right in the middle of everything, which turns the rest of the coast into a train ride instead of a parking problem. Base here when North County is at least half the trip: beach in the morning, the Village for lunch, and a rail day south whenever you want one.

The Transit Center sits one block from the ocean, and that single fact reorganizes the whole trip: COASTER, the Pacific Surfliner, the SPRINTER and Metrolink all stop there, so the coast from here down to San Diego opens up without a car key. The pier runs 1,942 feet out over the water, the Surf Museum sits a few steps off it, and the downtown blocks in between have filled in with brew pubs and patios. Wake up, walk to the sand, and let the timetable pick the rest of the day.