San Diego, California Travel Advice September, 2006

9/18/2006 - The most important thing that I can tell people is if you are choosing between renting a car or riding the trolly, rent a car ahead of time. The public transportation is awful, especially if you are not from a bigger city and don't know how to use it. Reserve a rental car ahead of time, don't use the small rental agencies (like the ones they may have in you hotel lobby). They will charge you a large deposit (without informing you they are doing it!) If you reserve one ahead of time, most larger companies don't require a deposit. Also, the taxi drivers are insane drivers and they will take you the long route to get extra money, so if you know where you're going, make sure you tell them to go the shorter route.
On a lighter note, our favorite thing to do was go to the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park near Escondido.It's about 20 miles north of San Diego, but it's definetly worth the drive. We also enjoyed Seaworld and the Zoo.We also went to Tijuana on a tour bus, but we wasted a half a day doing that. I had never been to Mexico, so I wanted to go, but I didn't enjoy it at all and the shopping wasn't good like I'd heard.