Downtown San Diego Pictures

Taken from an airplane as it headed toward a landing at the airport, this image shows the twin towers of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, the Holiday Inn Harbor View (cylindrical shape) and One America Plaza, the tallest building in San Diego whose distinctive top shape has prompted the nickname "Phillips screwdriver building."

You have to get out in a boat to see the city from this angle - we took this photo on a San Diego Harbor Cruise

Taken from the waterfront on Coronado Island, just across the bay from downtown. This photo was taken in 2006 and you may find some new buildings have gone up since then, especially new multi-story residential towers, but the view is stil more or less the same.

More stylish than most box-like convention centers, it sits on the waterfront and hosts hundreds of conventions every year. It was designed by Canadian architect Arthur Erickson. Although the city is in the nation's top ten by population, the civic center ranks in the 20's among North American convention facilities.

This smoochy sculpture pays tribute to all the sailors who have left their girls behind on the dock in San Diego.

The largest ship in the world when commissioned in 1945, the USS Midway was retired in 1991. The decommissioned ship now serves her final tour of duty in San Diego, home to one-third of the Pacific Fleet and a large cadre of the Midway's former crew.

The Port of San Diego is a busy cruise port, especially for cruises to Mexico. You'll often find two ships docked at the same time and in the busy season, a half dozen or more cruises depart San Diego every week.

The Gaslamp Quarter is an area of great architectural charm, its streets lined with original nineteenth-century buildings and others moved in from other parts of the San Diego, all restored to their original exuberance.

The San Diego Padres play in this downtown baseball park, and when they're not using it, you can take a behind-the-scenes tour.

Downtown's biggest shopping mall is named for early real estate developer and entrepreneur Alonzo Horton.

The world's oldest active sailing ship, the Star of India. During her long maritime career, the sturdy iron ship hauled freight from England to India, carried immigrants from England to New Zealand and worked as a salmon-packing ship in the Bering Sea. Now it's the centerpiece of the San Diego Maritime Museum.