We've traveled to San Diego four times now, spending a few days there with rental car. My step daughter lives in a small 1950s hous off Balboa west of the 805 a bit. The backyard has potential which is good.
The maritime layer, to me, is depressing. It can linger all day. When the sky does clear up, the place seems a lot more attractive to me. Traffic generally is not that bad. There is a light rail line, I never tried it. The airport is nice though the last two time we were flying out we have multi-hour delays.
We stay up in Carlsbad for various reasons. I found two pretty good restaurants nearby, one was quite expensive, $300 for two though I had $200 in gift cards for it, Vigiluchis. The other one we had lunch, it was quite decent, got expensive, $200 for 3 of us.
King’s Fish House | Seafood | Carlsbad California (kingsfishhouse.com)This got pricey because my unemployed step daughter felt she could order any whim she had, and did. The reason it annoyed me a bit is she'd order something and barely eat it, and order something else.
There aren't many trees, it isn't green, a lot of houses seem built on the large sand dunes. Downtown looks pretty nice. One often sees one or two fleet carriers docked across the bay which amuses me as each contains two nuclear reactors.
My wife noted she wouldn't like to live there, which I found interesting.
