Worldmark Balboa Park, San Diego

The theme letter for our ‪‎travel pics this week is W, for Worldmark.

On our most recent trip to the US, we were going to stay with my our daughter and her husband in Oakland – but as we were planning the trip, she mentioned that she had a conference in San Diego the week we arrived.

Oooh, we thought .. we have a Worldmark property in San Diego – why don’t we stay there instead?

Actually, there are four San Diego Worldmarks – Oceanside, Mission Valley, Inn on the Park and Balboa Park. We stayed at Balboa Park.

Now, we had never really thought about staying in San Diego – but we are glad we did, because it’s actually a fascinating place.

From Coronado Island and its historic hotel, to the Naval dockyards, to the Gaslamp district, to San Diego zoo … and there’s a fast, efficient light-rail service for the city – which even takes you to the Mexican border

We took that tram to the border, but didn’t go across, because we didn’t have our passports: Mexico would have let us in, but the US wouldn’t have let us back 🙂

Instead, we found a massive outlet mall right next to the border, where we bought shoes, and a watch, and a hideous potato-and-squeezy-cheese dish that looked terrible, but tasted …. worse.

None of which has anything to do with today’s picture.

The Balboa Park resort, like San Francisco, is a converted hotel and contains only one-bed and studio apartments.

But they are quite large, well appointed, centrally located – and have an amazing rooftop area where there are barbecues and a magic view.

I was still trying out a new camera when I took this, so it doesn’t do justice to the view at night, looking down toward the Coronado Bridge.