I had to go downtown to fill out some paperwork this morning, and I was done by noon. Museums in San Diego are free to residents on alternating Tuesdays, and today it was the aerospace and automotive museums. I think an art one was also free, but two museums was enough for me.
Honestly? I was a little disappointed. The automotive museum was about half the size of a target store, and the information was more geared around where they found the cars than what the actual cars had. I've enjoyed myself more at a trade show than at the automotive museum, poo, I've had more fun at a boat show.
The centerpiece was
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/34046 and it's a fairly impressive vehicle, with some pretty neat mods.
The aerospace museum was a little better, but I'm honestly giving it that grade for the apollo 9 command module. A lot of the aerospace museum was kiosk driven, which I'm not a huge fan of, but it does free up a lot of space. Once again, a lot of information is omitted, and there were a lot of small scale models rather than actual aircraft. I think the midway honestly eats the air and space museums lunch.
At both museums, "premium" sections were blocked off to us peons. At the automotive museum, it was just black curtains, so I'll save you from the mystery. Cop car, humvee, ambulances. The premium stuff in the aerospace museum was behind a wall, but it looks like an astronaut experience for kids, some flight sims running crap games instead of actual sims, and a third thing I wasn't sure what it was.
Honestly, if you're touristing San Diego, I'd say hit the Zoo, Hit the Midway, maybe one of the cheaper hornblower trips out of the harbor, like whale watching, the always lovely beaches, and local food.
Oh, and I guess if you've got the time, you could walk that whole waterfront, the midway is at one end, it goes by the star of india, and you've got your choice of overpriced gift shops. They closed the three restaurants in the middle, so I dunno what they did there. I know the city were bless'ed dicks about pulling their lease. Anthony's was no big loss, and I never bothered with the overpriced steak place, but the window shop to the left of Anthony's had great burgers, and for a tourist area it was affordable.