Which San Diego beach?

[erinbharris]

My kids are 4 and 7 and we want to spend one full day at the beach somewhere around San Diego.

Any suggestions? We like clean water (no seaweed) and sand!

 

[SD33]

I'd recommend La Jolla shores. I lived in San Diego until I was 7 years old and have visited back down there just about every year since. La Jolla is as beautiful as they come and it's an excellent atmosphere for families.

 

[carolinamama]

Yes! La Jolla!! We just stayed two nights at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, which is north of the main area. It was too cold two weeks ago! There's also the beach at Torrey Pines State Park in the northern La Jolla area near Del Mar. Even at 62 degrees and windy, we saw several families there for the day!

There's also Coronado Island. Definitely more pricy than what you can get in La Jolla, but the beach near the Hotel del Coronado was beautiful. People were building some serious sand castles!

 

[erinbharris]

Thanks for the suggestions!

We're staying in Carlsbad for 3 nights and at the Omni San Diego for 3...so we're just looking for a beach to go to for the day one day.

Coronado is beautiful and we're going to go there to visit, but I had read that stingrays are really bad in the water there?

La Jolla...just looked it up, so beautiful!

 

[prncssmel]

La Jolla Shores is great, but we like Coronado too - not too crowded, great for seashell collecting.

 

[eduk8r26]

I'll second Coronado. The surf was nice and mild, clean sand and lots of sand dollars if you go on a low tide. Only trouble was parking in the summer. It tends to fill up fast.

 

[Rowlf]

The stingrays are very bad at La Jolla Shores right now as well, with 100+ people getting stung over the weekend, the paper said. My son's summer camp cancelled their weekly field trip to there as a result.

Also, there is a kelp forest right off of La Jolla Shores, so expect to have plenty of it around, although that's just the way things go down here!

 

[jescal75]

we went to Coronado this weekend and the kids 3,6 they loved it no we had no issues got there early and were able to get great free parking

 

[erinbharris]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions...sounds like we're better off at Coronado right now.

 

[amym2]

We went to Coronado a couple of weeks ago and loved it, although it was way too cold and cloudy to swim. Our kids are 6 and 8 and they had endless fun in the sand. We ate lunch at a little place in Coronado- Villa Nueva Bakery- yummy sandwiches and pastries. We walked through the Hotel Del (and used their bathrooms) and it was lovely. We stopped in La Jolla on July 4th, but the whole area was packed with campers. The kids loved the tidepools there.

 

[erinbharris]

Thanks amym2. We have time, maybe we'll end up doing both. It all depends on whether or not Legoland is a 1 day or 2 day excursion--I'm not sure if the kids will want more than one day there. If they only end up needing one then we will have 2 beach days.

Thanks!