Discover Balboa Park

Since its founding in 1868, Balboa Park has effortlessly fashioned itself a reputation as part of San Diego’s pride and joy. Noted for its 1,200 acres of urban forest, adorned with educational and recreational museums, Spanish colonial architectural structures, and perfect perching places to watching the training of Olympic-hopefuls, Balboa Park is an amusement park for the mind, body and soul.

Catering to the tourist breed is a cinch, due to attractions like the hand-carved carousel, the world-famous zoo, museums ranging from art to science to air and space to natural history or anthropology. There are also hundreds of culturally infested shops with one-of-a-kind dingle hoppers and thingamajigs to bring back home to Aunt Sally and Jimmy. With the more than 500,000 annual Balboa Park visitors from all over the world, Balboa Park can be thought of as reducing itself into no more than a tourist attraction, which often converts the attendance of local San Diego visitors from regular to non-existent. The blade of excitement and newness has potentially dulled into a non-serrated butter knife. 

If you think you’ve seen Balboa Park forwards and backwards, think again. Sure, you can mouth the words along with the guide on the bus tour through the zoo, or have memorized all the art pieces at every museum. But Balboa Park is riddled with hidden and sometimes overlooked activities and things to see.

Discover these under-the-radar Balboa Park activities for your next visit.

Activity Center

38,000-square-feet of multi-purpose gymnasium built to accommodate badminton, volleyball, table tennis, and various tournaments, the activity center is a first-class sports facility for those work-out loving visitors. With public art and beautiful landscaping, the activity center’s visual appetizers accompany the sweat drops hinging off your brow. The spacious outdoor plazas also serve as ideal sites for picnics, public gatherings and special events.

Civic Dance Arts

An example of exactly what Civic Dance Arts offers is its Collage 2011: Dancing Outside the Lines, which uses the power of words through poetry, literature and text to transform the art of dance. In addition to holiday dance productions, dance collage, and dance fair, Civic Dance Arts offers high quality and affordable dance classes so you can be part of the excitement of performance and production, or simply enjoy an alternative type of exercise to the much-loved Pilates and yoga in San Diego.

Bon Temps Social Club

Home to San Diego’s Cajun/Zydeco dancing, visitors can learn to dance and develop a new appreciation for music at Balboa Parks Recital Hall, War Memorial Building and Balboa Park Club. Ample-sized dance floors at each venue accommodate dancing shoes of all sizes including adults as well as children who are accompanied by adults. Live music on the second Saturday of every month is held at these non-smoking/non-alcohol venues. Prior to most dances, an experienced instructor or dancer will present a beginners lesson followed by a more advanced lesson, each of which lasts approximately half an hour. $14 for admission is a pocket change relative to what one can expect during these boogie sessions. Maybe you’ll even learn what Zydeco means!

The Art Studios at Spanish Village

By trekking from one point of interest to another throughout the park, it’s easy to recognize when your path has lead you to the Art Studios at Spanish Village. Historic Spanish-tile roofed buildings house unique shops where you can observe daily art demonstrations featuring contemporary fine arts and crafts directly from San Diego’s largest community of artists. Even the non-art connoisseur can appreciate the 37 working artist studios/galleries that host more than 200 local painters, metal smiths, sculptors, clay artists, jewelry designers, basket weavers, fiber artists, printmakers, glass artists, mixed-media artists and more. You’ll soon start referring to the Spanish Village as San Diego’s “fascination station.”

Balboa Food and Wine School

Food and wine. This blurb could very well end here, and half of you could already be elbowing a 12 year-old on his Huffy with rear wheel pegs for the last spot on the bike rack at the park. Ironically enough, this experience of exploring culinary arts takes place in the historical House of Hospitality at Balboa Park. If avoiding technical jargon while being educated in two things that come second to only your family sounds like it’s right up your alley, be sure to reserve yourself a spot with the only 16 participants allowed for the cooking school and 25-35 in the wine school. Each student has a great view to observe the Chef’s culinary techniques in the exhibition kitchen with bar-style settings.

Botanical Building

Balboa Park has countless picturesque and photo-worthy spots nestled within its maze of wonders. The list of visual media references the park contains ranges from The California Bell Tower in the movie “Almost Famous,” to serving as a skateboarder’s playground in the “San Diego Level” in Tony Hawk’s “Underground” video game. Perhaps the most photographed scene in Balboa Park and a must-see destination in San Diego is the view of the Botanical Building with the Lily Pond in the foreground. This historic building is one of the largest lath structures in the world, including more than 2,100 permanent plants, collections of ferns, palms, orchids and other tropical plants. The park also features seasonal flower displays, making for truly remarkable and ever-changing visual stimulation, while undoubtedly emitting an intoxicating floral aroma. It’s also free to the public on most days of the week.

For more information about what Balboa Park has to offer, visit balboapark.org/in-the-park.

Discover more hotels and tourism and follow our San Diego entertainment blog for more tips and trends.