Fish Tacos & Winter Sunsets: A Relaxed 3-Day Beach & Food Escape in San Diego in December

The day starts with the smell of tortillas hitting the griddle and Pacific air pushing down Voltaire Street. At City Tacos, morning light spills through the windows onto bright talavera tiles while someone in flip-flops orders fish tacos with strawberries, because in Ocean Beach that’s just breakfast. From there, you trade salsa for Spanish-style colonnades as Balboa Park’s arches echo with footsteps and distant buskers, the cool stone under your hand a quiet reset after the beach. By lunch you’re back at the water’s edge at Blue Water Seafood Ocean Beach, watching staff pull fillets from the display case while the sizzle of grilled fish and the tang of lime fill the small indoor space. The afternoon stretches out along Sunset Cliffs Natural Park, where the trail is a ribbon carved into sandstone and the sound is all waves hitting rock and the occasional shout from a surfer below. Dinner at La Doña folds the day inward again: retractable walls open to the street, colorful papel picado overhead, and seafood tacos that taste like the neighborhood distilled. You finish with a glass in hand at Vinum Locus, a long, narrow room on Newport Avenue where the lighting is low, the bar gleams, and the hum of OB locals makes the winter night feel warm. Tomorrow, you’ll trade cliffs for the city’s creative core in North Park—but tonight, it’s all salt air and the slow fade of the sky.

The morning starts in the Gaslamp Quarter, where the Museum of Illusions feels like a playful jolt of caffeine for your brain. You step into rooms that flip perspective, lean against walls that aren’t really walls, and watch your reflection warp under cool, gallery-style lighting while a guide’s easy banter and other visitors’ laughter echo down the hall. Outside, the historic brick facades and fire escapes nod to every San Diego travel article you’ve ever skimmed—but you’re here for tacos, not checklists. By midday you’re in North Park, that stretch of 30th Street and University Avenue that every local guide quietly points to for food and beer. Lunch at Papasotes is behind a bar, of course, because North Park loves a semi-secret counter; the smell of sizzling papas and grilled meat cuts through whatever’s pouring on tap. The afternoon drifts into Birrieria Enriquez on University, where guacamole arrives in a molcajete and birria tacos drip onto paper-lined trays, the room calm in that way only a confident kitchen can pull off. As the light fades, Black Radish shifts the tone: white plates, thoughtful plating, and a hum that feels more dinner party than restaurant. You end at Original 40 Brewing, garage doors rolled up, glasses sweating slightly in the cool night air while conversations from the bar spill out onto the sidewalk. Tomorrow, you’ll head back to the water and the working docks—but tonight is about the city’s interior appetite.

The day begins where San Diego is still a working port, not just a postcard. At Tuna Harbor Dockside Market, the air smells sharply of salt and fresh fish, gulls wheel overhead, and fishermen in rubber boots talk quietly over crates of glistening catch. You move through the small maze of stalls with coffee in one hand, admiring the sheen on whole tuna and the careful filleting happening right in front of you. It’s a reminder that every taco you’ve eaten this week started somewhere like this. Midday takes you to Blue Water Seafood Market & Grill on India Street, where the line snakes past a case of fillets and the sound of the grill is constant. After lunch, Cabrillo National Monument pulls you out onto the high spine of Point Loma, wind tugging at your clothes as you look back at the city and out over the Pacific, the lighthouse standing small but stubborn against the sky. Later, La Jolla softens everything: you trace the Coast Walk Trail as afternoon light hits sandstone and the Concrete Steps to the Beach drop you down to sea level, the smell of kelp and wet rock rising up. Dinner at Mitch’s Seafood is casual—picnic tables, boats bobbing just beyond the railing, tacos and local fish on paper plates—before you end the trip with a curated beach fire at Bayside Bonfires on Mission Bay, toes in the cold sand, face warm from the flames as the last December sunset of your stay reflects off the water.