Mid-range · 6-hour walk · San Diego
Balboa Park and Old Town in six hours
The Spanish-colonial palaces of the 1915 exposition, the lily pond, the art museum and the town where California began.
Balboa Park was laid out for the Panama-California Exposition of 1915, and its Spanish-colonial buildings, put up as temporary pavilions, are now its museums. This route crosses the park from the bridge to the organ pavilion and finishes in Old Town, near where Spain founded its first mission in California in 1769.
The route, stop by stop
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Cabrillo Bridge
The entrance the 1915 exposition was meant to be seen from, with the California Tower ahead.
10 min here Walk here → -
Museum of Us
The anthropology museum under the California Tower, the exposition's centrepiece. The tower can be climbed on a timed tour.
50 min here Walk here → -
Botanical Building
One of the largest lath structures in the world, built for the exposition, with the lily pond in front.
20 min here Walk here → -
San Diego Museum of Art
Spanish old masters in a building whose façade copies that of the university in Salamanca.
60 min here Walk here → -
Japanese Friendship Garden
A tea house, a koi pond and a canyon planted with cherry trees.
30 min here Walk here → -
Spreckels Organ Pavilion
An outdoor organ of more than five thousand pipes, with a free concert every Sunday afternoon.
15 min here Walk here → -
Old Town San Diego
Arrive by taxi from the previous stop
The Mexican-era town of the 1820s to 1870s, with adobe houses, a schoolhouse and the restaurants of Old Town around it. Free.
60 min here Walk here →
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