California - San Diego

San Diego Bay © Bob Yarbrough, San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau

San Diego characterises a typical Southern Californian beach city: with year-round sunshine and surf; a superb coastline with miles of sandy-white beaches; easygoing inhabitants, and a wide variety of world-class family attractions that draws tourists, long-time vacationers and would-be residents to ' America 's finest city'.

Although California's second biggest city with an ever-increasing population of more than a million, San Diego prides itself on its conservative small-town ambience, with very little of the pollution, highway congestion and raciness of Los Angeles. In 1769 a Spanish missionary by the name of Father Junipero Serra established a Catholic mission and fortified settlement in what was later to become San Diego; it was the first permanent European settlement on the West Coast of the United States. It remained a village backwater until, with the bombing of Pearl Harbour during World War II, the US Naval Fleet Headquarters was relocated to San Diego Bay and the booming of wartime activity transformed it into a thriving city.

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