Insiders' Guide to San Diego, 6th (Insiders' Guide Series) [Paperback]

Maribeth Mellin (Author), Jane Onstott (Author), Judith C. Devlin (Author)

Book Description

Series: Insiders' Guide Series | Publication Date: April 22, 2009

Insiders’ Guide to San Diego is the quintessential and comprehensive source for travel and relocation information about this sprawling, spectacular Southern California city.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

For more than twenty years, the Insiders’ Guide® series has been the essential source for in-depth travel and relocation information—from true insiders whose personal, practical perspective gives you everything you need to know.

 

Blessed with a mild Mediterranean climate and seventy miles of sun-soaked beaches, and sandwiched between beautiful mountain ranges to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, San Diego is a paradise for visitors—and residents alike. From sailing to snorkeling, swap meets to symphony concerts, authentic Mexican specialties to American bistro fare, this authoritative guide shows you how to navigate San Diego’s eclectic scene and diverse opportunities for fun.

 

Inside you'll find:

 

•  Countless details on how to live and thrive in San Diego, from the best in local shopping to the

    lowdown on real estate
•  Comprehensive listings of restaurants, lodgings, and day trips

•  The inside scoop on world-renowned attractions such as Balboa Park, the San Diego Wild Animal

    Park, the San Diego Zoo, and SeaWorld

•  Sections dedicated to children and retirement

Whether you’re planning a vacation, already living in the area, or looking to relocate, Insiders’ Guide to San Diego will show you everything you need to know.

About the Author

Maribeth Mellin is an award-winning journalist who has covered San Diego for more than two decades, developing her knowledge of the inner workings and far-flung regions of the county as senior editor at San Diego Magazine. Maribeth lives in San Diego.

Jane Onstott is an editor, travel writer, and translator who moved to San Diego in 1976 to attend San Diego State University. She has contributed her knowledge of San Diego to several guidebooks, including Best Places San Diego, edited by colleague Maribeth Mellin. Jane lives in Lakeside, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Insiders' Guide; 6th edition (April 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0762748702
• ISBN-13: 978-0762748709
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #833,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Average, December 29, 2010

By 

J. Sloan (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Insiders' Guide to San Diego, 6th (Insiders' Guide Series) (Kindle Edition)

While this book was full of information and helpful details, I found the guidance to be quite average.

We are traveling to San Diego for a family vacation and this will be our first time to California. When purchasing this book, I was hoping for insider tidbits on enjoying the sights that are meaningful. Instead this book provided me with Chuck E Cheese and the YMCA as kids activity references. While I am not opposed to either, I can certainly locate these types of offerings without investing in a book.

This book does provide a great breakdown of how San Diego is organized and gave good detail on neighborhood characteristics. If you are uncertain about where to stay based on your vacation or visit objectives, this may certainly be helpful.

Unfortunately, I do not give a highly recommend or a discourage on this book but instead will mention that it is extremely average and not much different than the typical travel guide. I would advise that you stick with Frommers.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource, January 17, 2010

By 

Jan Paula (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Insiders' Guide to San Diego, 6th (Insiders' Guide Series) (Paperback)

I am finding this a great reference for all kinds of things you would want to know in getting to know the area. Seasonal/regional Festivals, snapshots of the flavor of each town are especially helpful and tons of things to do and to see are listed here. Lots of written info. Not many photos or illustrations, which I wish were there as they are so helpful -- but I have found another book to fill in this way that is good at this (but shorter on info). I would recommend it for anyone new to the area or thinking of moving there.

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Insider's Guide to What?, February 19, 2010

By 

GPorat "Sam Smithee" (Boston, MA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Insiders' Guide to San Diego, 6th (Insiders' Guide Series) (Paperback)

Imagine planning a trip across the United States and really wanting an inside scoop on some information on the places that are not in the travel brochures. Want to know where the hidden gems and unlikely favorites places are? In this case, the travel books, Insider's Guide, are not recommended. A guide series that limits it coverage to cities or small regions within the U.S., Insider's title can be misleading, and this guide should definitely not be judged by its name or cover. The travel guide contains some flaws that can be improved upon by making some tweaks and adding some features, but it also contains fundamental issues that might make it completely impractical.
Organization is important when it comes to the ease of using travel guides, and it is Insider's one strength. While many international traveler's guides tend to focus on entire countries, Insider's has the benefit of only focusing on domestically therefore allowing it to have and entire book for one city or small region. New Hampshire is in fact the largest area that one of Insider's covers. All the others are either national parks, cities, or counties. Because the entire Insider's Guide collection is organized by location, then the organization within each book is run by categories. Hotels, spas, resorts, restaurants, outdoor activities, arts, medical contacts, historical sites are some of the broader sections. Some books have very specific sections like gambling, fishing, golfing, etc... This is very useful organization because in a theoretical situation, the traveler might arrive at their city of choosing and need a place to stay. By going to the index in the back it would be easy to find where the listing are for all sorts of accommodations. Or for example, if the traveler were looking for something to do during a fair weather day, then they would go look in the outdoor activities section. Organization is key in a traveler's limited time, and Insider's has a good handle on it.
No matter how helpful organization can be, there can be many pitfalls for travel guides. Insider's has quite a few. The fastest way to tell that it is not going to be very helpful is just by looking at it. Flipping through the pages, it is easy to tell that these guides are full of words and no visuals. An ideal guide, especially for a newer traveler, should have pictures scattered throughout the book as well as maps. Insider's has a color picture on the front cover, and it looks like a stock photo that could have been taken anywhere. Having no maps makes the guide unappealing for all travelers, but especially the lack of pictures makes the guide less appealing to the newer traveler because they would be more keen on getting as much information as they can about the new place that they are going to.
The title "Insider's Guide" misrepresents the content, a flaw that only becomes apparent after skimming and seeing how much actual "insider" knowledge the guide gives. For most of the hotels there are very positive and rather bland imagery of the place, mostly describing some of the services provided. In the entire guide there are no blatant negative reviews. There should be a balance between positive and negative reviews in a travel guide because it helps the reader gauge the opinions of the writers. The authors of Insider's seem afraid to come off as actual people with preferences and instead end up sounding more like advertisers for each place, being in favor of relatively trivial attributes. All the descriptions about each restaurant or accommodation are either very vanilla in it their opinion or simply bereft of any opinion at all. For a lot of the descriptions there were only operation hours and location with a brief description of a rather self-explanatory site. A golf course speaks for itself and dragging its description out into four sentences feels like space filler. The practical info such as operation hours would be useful in a foreign country, but when in America, every location has a website in English that would list the same information. The traveler should not feel like they paid a lot of money for a book that ends up being more like a brochure. This guide might be intended for the technologically handicapped, such as people who do not use the internet or do not have a cell phone to call a place that could easily just have a phone listing the back index of the guide.
Another critical pitfall of Insider's is that it has no rating system. Ideally, it should have some quotes and ratings from other aspiring traveler's, but instead the entire opinion comes from a few, and sometimes only one writer. Insider's needs to use some sort of star rating system or something of a similar nature for a traveler to be able compare each site to the other. It is unclear if the author has been to all the places or gathered info and others' opinions and experiences from each site. In addition, all the authors are generally older and female, giving the book a slight bias for some more typically feminine interests in travel. Some more variety and a larger sample base for opinions and ratings could help Insider's Guide become more useful and well rounded.
There is such a thing as information overload in travel guides and Insider's does this too often. Some parts of it end up sounding like a history book, and no one likes traveling with luggage as heavy as a history textbook. This calculated detailed description of every corner might deprive the traveler of the novel feeling of traveling and discovering on his or her own. To be fair, this detailed description might help comfort the new traveler, but ultimately might limit their traveling experience to only places that they've read about in the guide.
Perhaps Insider's Guide wouldn't be as text heavy if it had pictures. Or maybe it would be more suited for a slower, traveler who has the time research each and every detail of their destination. It could probably even be cut in half from a four hundred page guide if the editors used stars to rate each location instead of excessive writing. But ultimately, the traveler is getting what they paid their twelve dollars and fifty cents for: an extremely elongated travel brochure, full of solid organization and all the standard places with standard, face value descriptions. The words "don't count on it" would be the inside scoop for the younger traveler, looking to use a helpful travel guide, fit for their age, experience and interest.