The most difficult decision to make when planning a vacation to La Jolla is determining what to do with all it has to offer. La Jolla offers an excellent array of fine and trendy restaurants covering a wide range of cuisines, from fine dining restaurants perched atop jagged cliffs to out-of-the-way French Bistros. World famous for its indulgent soft sand beaches and year-round vacation sunshine, guests are awed by La Jolla’s watercolor sunsets over the Pacific Ocean.
Originally designed as a safe place for children to wade, Children’s Pool is a man-made pool-into-the-ocean that one was a children’s beach but is now a famous haven for wild Harbor Seals. Visitors enjoy venturing out along a cement walkway over the water to watch the seals and their youngsters lounging, playing and slipping away into the ocean. Nearby, you will find the beautiful La Jolla Cove bathing beach and tide pools.
La Jolla Cove is a small sandy beach tucked between sandstone cliffs and sheltered from the ocean’s currents. Known for its extraordinary beauty, the Cove is the most photographed beach in Southern California. At high tides the rocks near the beach trap water; when the tide goes out tide pools are formed, full of interesting critters. Adults and children alike enjoy exploring the sea-life left behind. Check the tide tables in the daily Union Tribune newspaper; the tide pools are best enjoyed at low tide.
A visit to The Cave Store affords visitors the opportunity to descend a 100 year old stairway, into a manmade tunnel, down into the fascinating and mysterious Sunny Jim Cave – the largest of several ocean caves in La Jolla Cove. The cave’s first owner, Sunny Jim, hired two Chinese laborers in the early 1900′s to dig this underground tunnel down to the cave. Using only picks and shovels, they carried all the dirt out by hand. In the 1910′s, the only way the public could get to the cave was by lowering themselves down a rope. Today, you can take 145 stairs from The Cave Store. Sunny Jim Cave is the only sea cave in California that you can enter from a stairway.
Mount Soledad is La Jolla’s most prominent landmark, visible from virtually everywhere. The mountaintop is the site of the Mount Soledad cross, the subject of a continuing controversy over the involvement of religion in government. Take Nautilus Street up to the park at the top to enjoy amazing panoramic views. Visitors and locals alike describe the park as peaceful, calm, romantic and breathtaking. At night you can see the fireworks that SeaWorld launches each evening. Dr. Seuss lived on the mountain, his widow Audrey still does.
Situated over the ocean on sandstone bluffs north of La Jolla, between Torrey Pines Park and La Jolla Farms, The Torrey Pines Gliderport is designated specifically for today’s gliders. On days when the winds are just right, gliders line the cliffs, waiting for the perfect gust to carry them into the sky. The graceful navigators riding the sea breezes in their brightly colored gliders attract admiring spectators up and down the Torrey Pines shoreline year-round. You can fly like a bird by going tandem with an instructor after a 30-minute ground school, then up and away off the edge of a 300 foot cliff out over the ocean, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Authors Ann Dunham and Terry Hunefeld bought an old bed and breakfast two years ago and renovated it into a lovely, intimate B&B Inn at the sea in the lost in time surf haven beach-town of Encinitas. For more information visit: B&Bs in La Jolla or Beach hotels in La Jolla San Diego.
