San Diego
San Diego is a city in Southern California, not far at all from the border with Mexico.
San Diego is one of the best cities in the United States to live in. It is the safest major metropolis in terms of homicide rates, boasts an excellent California climate, and is home to many startups and large companies.
Mission Hills
Of course, the city is very expensive. One of the city’s most prestigious neighborhoods is Mission Hills. This is where the so-called old money live.
The street scenery is in no way inferior to Beverly Hills in Los Angeles: palm trees, sunshine, and a road stretching off to the horizon.
The streets in this area literally sparkle with cleanliness.
Everything is polished to such an extent that even the roadside cacti look as if they were taken from a botanical garden.
In places, it starts to feel like this isn’t reality at all, but an image in a photo editor where someone has cranked every slider up to the max.
Once, in the early 20th century, the middle class settled in this area — doctors, teachers, and so on. The houses bought a hundred years ago have since been passed down through inheritance, maintained, and expanded. Over many years, the neighborhood thus became one of the most prestigious in America.
That’s why people call it “old money.” The idea is that the houses were bought a very long time ago, and few “new money” types can afford a local mansion. Prices start at $2 million.
Near the local church stands a sign with an LGBT symbol and the inscription: “We welcome everyone.”
Many houses have vintage cars parked by them. Old money loves old rides.
Free library. You take a book — you leave another.
Lemons grow in someone’s garden.
Old money shop at the Vons supermarket. It’s a California chain known for high-quality products.
But the coffee, it looks like, they drink at the Starbucks. What a dump.
Old Town
Not far from Mission Hills is San Diego’s historic district, which was founded back in 1769.
An incredible place. A slice of the Wild West preserved right next to a big metropolis.
Some buildings have been preserved since the 19th century; others have been rebuilt and refinished.
The tobacco shop has retained an interior from two centuries ago. Cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and tobacco of every flavor and variety are sold there.
The seller personally smokes cigars from this shop and dresses the way merchants dressed in the 19th century.
You can’t stay long in this old city, or you’ll end up having a fit from an aesthetic overload.
Downtown
It’s hard to expect anything grand from an American downtown, unless it’s downtown New York. Probably the best thing San Diego’s business district can boast is its modern trolley.
An old Santa Fe railway station turned up here, thought its name sounds far sweeter than the station itself actually looks.
Downtown itself is neither low nor high. There are no big skyscrapers in the city — only wide ones.
Sometimes it kind of reminds of Miami.
Amazing thing: the city has scooters and unusual bike racks. For car-centric America, that’s a real rarity.
While people try not to live in the downtown areas of many other cities, downtown San Diego is quite a popular place to live.
The main reason Americans don’t settle in downtown areas is the huge number of homeless people and petty criminals. This situation developed because of the mass move of the population to the suburbs, where you could buy your own house very cheaply. As a result, city centers were left mostly to the poor.
San Diego wasn’t affected by this wave, and the downtown area is safe here, but you can still come across beggars and homeless people.
Balboa Park
Not far from downtown San Diego, lies its own Central Park.
Balboa Park is huge. It’s almost one and a half times larger than Central Park in New York, and in terms of what it offers, it’s one and a half times cooler. If Central Park is just a well-designed park, then Balboa Park is more like a full-on architectural and park ensemble.
The park opened for the joint Panama–California Exposition in 1915. Most of the buildings were constructed specifically to recreate the Spanish Colonial style, but if you don’t know that, you’d never be able to tell them from the real thing.
The reader understood correctly: this bell tower and this dome, indistinguishable from the finest examples of Spanish colonial architecture, were built to order for the 1915 exhibition.
Later, other exhibitions were held in the park as well, and the buildings were expanded again and again. This palace here, for example, was built in 1975. Is it possible to believe that?
And all this beauty is set in the middle of a green park. Everything around is immersed in trees, palm trees, shrubs, and flowers.
There was even a Japanese garden. Honestly, all that’s left is to bring some Japanese here and seat Trump in an emperor’s costume.
Coast
The western border of California is the Pacific Ocean. Along the entire coastline run several popular highways, offering views so stunning your jaw can’t help but drop.
It’s a popular belief that the best sunsets can be seen in Miami. That’s utter nonsense. Miami is on the east coast, and at sunset the sun doesn’t set into the ocean — it sets over the city. Oh no, dear reader! In Florida you can only watch sunrises, and you should greet sunsets in California!
Lucky are those who live right here on this very coast. Homes here must be even more expensive than in Mission Hills.
Just look at the streets.
Residents of central San Diego and tourists don’t head all the way to the shoreline; they get off a few stops earlier to enjoy the contrast that offers the California landscape. The road here first climbs upward...
freezes at its peak, leaving behind only the blue horizon...
and then rolls down the slope, leading to the ocean at dusk.
Amazing city.
