San Diego: Some like it really cool

San Diego may be less than two hours' drive from Los Angeles but it couldn't be further removed in spirit. West Coasters like to call the city "LA without the attitude" but this is to miss, entirely, San Diego's unique qualities. Nothing like its northern neighbour in layout, size, attitude or atmosphere, if San Diego had to be compared to any of its coastal compatriots it would perhaps be San Francisco.

San Diego is defined by the sea. There are very few places in this small, grid-plan city where you aren't aware of your proximity to the pounding Pacific. In the financial district seagulls wheel overhead, and around the smart eateries lining the newly gentrified streets of the Gaslamp District surf kids in flip-flops mingle with Jimmy Choo-clad lunching ladies. Pick any point on most of San Diego's cross-town streets and you will spot the towering decks of giant cruise ships dwarfing the city's harbours. Add 248 sunny days a year to this seaside setting and you're some way towards understanding how San Diego embodies all of southern California's considerable coastal charms.

Until recently, the city sold itself on these very outdoors credentials. This, the tourist board trumpeted, is the place to come if you want to go sea-kayaking along the city's 70 miles of sandy coastline and hiking in its desert backcountry.

Meanwhile, back in the city proper, there was something of an image problem. Most travellers saw this sleepy naval town a mere 16 miles from the Mexican border as a provincial, conservative backwater with little of the glam or urban growth of the northern Californian cities, and something of a mañana attitude to service. Bit by bit over the past couple of decades this has changed, mainly due to the renaissance of the downtown, an area previously occupied by abandoned buildings, adult cinemas and pawnshops.

In the 1980s the Gaslamp District finally began to see some redevelopment. The lamps that once lit the streets of downtown were returned, albeit electric ones, along with boutiques, restaurants and galleries. Now the place is humming. Arrive there even on a week night and the hub around Market and 5th Street is jumping with jazz bars, Irish pubs and retro-chic eateries. I pass an open-fronted bar where 20-something patrons in impeccable 1950s attire dance to a five-piece bebop band with such gusto it's as if I've been whisked back half a century.

But the neighbourhood's latest arrivals couldn't be more contemporary. The W Hotel, the hospitality industry's barometer for affordable urban cool, recently set up shop just north of the Gaslamp. Its rooftop beach bar, complete with heated sandy floors and resident DJs, is the place to be for late-night drinks once Market Street gets messy. The Hard Rock Hotel is scheduled to open downtown next spring, housing a Nobu sushi restaurant and rooftop cabana bar to compete with that of the W. The opening of Petco Park, the new $478m home of San Diego's Padres baseball team, has brought new life to the rather seedy area that lies along the waterfront.

Follow Harbour Drive along this stretch across the Coronado Bridge spanning San Diego Bay and you get a real sense of how much downtown has grown up. A glance back reveals "provincial" San Diego as the archetypal American pop-up metropolis, though a pretty one backed by the snow-capped peaks of the Peninsular Ranges.

Five minutes later, on the dunes of Coronado Beach, the city seems far behind. Coronado Island is a place where retired navy generals outnumber hotels and development remains contained - half the island occupied by a well-hidden naval station. Yet in the late 1800s this was one of the world's great holiday hubs, thanks to the Hotel del Coronado, a Victorian confection of spires and gables that was the final stop for railroad holiday packages.

So popular was "the Del" that by the 1920s a tented resort had grown up along Silver Strand, catering to the overflow. Each tent had wooden floors, canvas drapes that rolled up, along with beds, a three-legged "spider" for a washbowl, dresser and a chair. If a visitor needed cooking facilities a kerosene stove was set up in a tent at the back for an extra $5 a month.

Forty years later, what was meant to be a seasonal solution had become known as Tent City, with public baths, theatres, restaurants and even a dedicated newspaper. The place lasted into the Second World War. In 1958, the Del's red turrets provided the backdrop for a bikini-clad Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot. Things have got decidedly sleepier. Golden-age, coach-party tours now predominate and a five-minute walk through the dunes leaves you alone with the Pacific.

Even with the city's new urban glam, San Diego's principal charms remain sandy ones. For a quick beach fix, a 10-minute drive north of downtown brings you to the "surf-and-mirth" communities of O.B. and P.B. (Ocean Beach and Pacific Beach). There, locals have ousted franchises such as Starbucks in favour of independent craft galleries and smoke shops, and spend their time either in the water kayaking and surfing or plying the miles of coastal paths on skates, bikes or foot. Sandwiched between the two communities are the protected waters of Mission Bay whose pleasures are briny ones: rowing, waterskiing, windsurfing and jet skiing are just a few of the activities on offer from the numerous slipways and jetties.

The coastal crown, however, is La Jolla (mis-spelled Spanish for "the jewel"). Principal activities around this rocky nub, five minutes further north, are just windswept coastal walks, seal spotting, and gawping at the million-dollar homes in this ritzy residential beach community. In well-heeled La Jolla village, hotels such as La Valencia offer ocean views fit for a visiting millionaire with tariffs to match. North of there, the coast is home to Moonlight State Beach, in Encinitas, a long, flat sandy stretch that's perfect for bucket-and-spade-carrying families. The coastline gets wilder up here with much of it dedicated to an ecological reserve, a state park and an oceanography institute. But the easiest way to get a taste of San Diego's rich marine life is to take a whale-watching cruise from the city's Broadway Pier.

Two hours out into the Pacific on one of these cruises I encounter a pod of four gray whales on their migration route back from Mexico to the Antarctic. The sight and primordial sound of these rare 50ft mammals blowing vapour plumes in arcs above the ocean is not an experience I expected to take home at the end of a city break.

The writer was a guest of W Hotels. Return fares to San Diego from London start at £630 with Northwest airways via Minneapolis from Expedia (0870 050 0808; expedia.co.uk)

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