And now for your entertainment: another terrifying scene!
Beware of giant octopi with a taste for canned foods! This wily octopus steals tin cans from helpless, despairing sailors, who then promptly throw themselves into watery oblivion. When you’re in the middle of the ocean in an old ship full of tin cans, what is one to do?
This cool mural adds character to the front of a small dive bar on Bankers Hill. The place’s name is Tin Can Alehouse. I’m told they serve beer exclusively in cans.
Walking recently through San Diego’s Civic Center Plaza, I enjoyed a variety of historical images and colorful designs inlaid in the central courtyard.
Check out Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo’s galleon the San Salvador. In 1542, the Portuguese explorer discovered San Diego Bay on behalf of Spain while searching for a mythical water route across North America.
An actual working replica of the San Salvador is being built by the San Diego Maritime Museum. One of these days I’ll walk north along the bay to Spanish Landing in order to take some pics!
Usually the huge elevator on the south side of the USS Midway Museum contains a few tables and chairs. When I walked by and took the above photo, it featured an F-4 Phantom II jet fighter that flew during the Vietnam War!
The historic USS Midway, a modern aircraft carrier converted into a museum, has become one of the most popular attractions in San Diego. It’s docked on the old Navy Pier right next to downtown. Over a million people visit the Midway each year!
Over time the museum continues to add refurbished military aircraft exhibits. The flight deck is now crowded with them, and the hangar below is filling up. The old airplanes are fixed up and painted by volunteers at Naval Air Station North Island across San Diego Bay, then brought over to the Midway on a barge and lifted onto the flight deck with a big crane. I saw this happen once years ago and it was a very cool sight!
UPDATE! I took the next photo on a sunny day the following summer…
ANOTHER UPDATE! Here come two more pics that I took in late 2014. It seems the A-4 Skyhawk is now a permanent feature on the elevator…
ANOTHER! Why not add another pic? This one was taken in early 2016…
One more UPDATE!
I stood on the pictured elevator in 2025. The area is now filled with tables. I noticed the following sign…
One of Midway’s three giant aircraft elevators that are capable of moving aircraft between the Flight Deck and Hangar Deck in 15-20 seconds. The hydraulically operated elevators have a lifting capacity of 130,000 lbs…and are large enough to accommodate two F/A-18 aircraft at a time.
The yellow ribbons along the edge of the elevator in the final photo memorialize the approximately 60,000 military personnel killed in action during the Vietnam War. The ribbons during my visit were tied all around the aircraft carrier…
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These private yachts are docked directly behind the San Diego Convention Center. Some can be really huge. Most are gorgeous. Over the years, I’ve seen a few that have helicopters or small airplanes!
I took the above photo while riding the ferry to Coronado island. The building jutting up in the background is the Omni Hotel, which stands in the Gaslamp adjacent to Petco Park.
The following pics were taken at various different times:
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Another really cool boat on San Diego Bay is the Maritime Museum’s 1914 wooden pilot boat. Appropriately named Pilot, she served as San Diego’s main pilot boat for 82 years! Over the decades, thousands of commercial ships entered and departed the bay with her navigational assistance.
During World War II, she was used as a patrol boat by the Coast Guard. She was (and remains) decorated with 6 six-month service chevrons.
When you purchase admission to the Maritime Museum (home of the Star of India and other historic ships), you can pay a little extra and ride the Pilot for a short harbor tour. It’s a lot of fun and definitely well worth it!
Here are three more photos I took in 2016!
The first few shots were taken when this blog was relatively new. I had no idea my blog would grow to the extent is has. You might notice I now spend a little more time and effort with my photographs!
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This blog has grown tremendously over three years and now features thousands of photos around San Diego! Are you curious? There’s lots of cool stuff to check out!
Here’s the Cool San Diego Sights main page, where you can read the most current blog posts. If you’re using a small mobile device, click those three parallel lines up at the top–that opens up my website’s sidebar, where you’ll see the most popular posts, a search box, and more!
To enjoy future posts, you can also “like” Cool San Diego Sights on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.
You see all sorts of boats and ships on San Diego Bay. The Silvergate might be my favorite.
Operated by Flagship (the new name of San Diego Harbor Excursion), the small ship is often used as a Coronado ferry.
A varnished wooden bench runs around the outside perimeter of the little ship, where you can just sit and enjoy the fresh air and amazing views. I love it!
Here are some more photos that I took in late 2017…
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of fun photos for you to share and enjoy!
People gravitate toward water. Water sparkles, soothes, delights, attracts the eye and invites reflection. I love the opening to Moby Dick, where Melville says: “Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries–stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water . . . ”
Look at these folks just gazing at the water!
The Ferry Landing in Coronado offers amazing views of San Diego Bay. Stand out on the pier, splash on the small beach, sit on the grass or on the patio of a restaurant, and just gaze in a quiet reverie at the passing boats and the gleaming San Diego skyline. Call me crazy, but I could linger here for hours.
That’s one reason why I love to take the ferry to Coronado!
The second pic shows people on the Coronado Ferry Landing pier. During the day, San Diego’s downtown skyline is a beautiful sight. At night, all lit up, it’s like a glowing dream. If you were turn to the left, you’d see a whole bunch of people fishing.
Next we see people filing from the pier down to the float where the ferry ties up. During the tourist season, the Silvergate ferry takes people to the Convention Center; a larger ship takes people to the Broadway Pier. You can bring your bicycle on board (or rent one at the Ferry Landing) and bike across the island to the ocean side, where you’ll find the Hotel del Coronado.
This photo was taken from Navy Pier just south of the Broadway Pier. It shows a cluster of Hornblower and Flagship harbor excursion boats, plus the big Celebrity Solstice cruise ship at the San Diego cruise ship terminal. If you were to turn to the right, you’d see the historic Santa Fe train depot and shining downtown skyline closeby.
The red, white and blue Patriot speed boat is a new addition to the growing fleet of tour and charter boats seen daily on our beautiful Big Bay!
The following pics were taken on another day:
Check out the Lyra Leader, a massive box-like car-carrying ship as it heads down San Diego Bay toward the National City Marine Terminal. These cool, very unusual type of roll-on/roll-off (RORO) ships are often seen passing close to downtown. They’re bringing in thousands of new cars from Asia–Japan and South Korea–which are driven off a ramp into a massive parking lot. Many of the vehicles are then loaded into car-carrying freight trains and sent off toward their final destinations.
In this photograph, note the active aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson docked at the North Island naval base on the left.
UPDATE–I finally got a couple more pics of another ship while I was crossing San Diego Bay on the ferry. All the passengers were excited to be so close to the massive thing!
ANOTHER UPDATE–Here are more photos that I took at later times…
Venture anywhere along San Diego Bay and you’re in for a show!
Look at these pics of huge blue fishing boats, colorful sailboats, and the big gray Navy ships glimpsed in the distance!
Of course, sailboats are easily recognized, and everyone loves watching them dance on the big bay. On any given day you’ll see many white sails. Often you’ll see a group of sailboats racing together, tacking, tilting, running on the sea breeze.
The big blue fishing boats with the square wells that we seem to be standing beside are commercial live bait boats docked at Tuna Harbor’s G Street Pier. Seine nets are utilized to gather schools of small fish, which are then dumped into the deep wells. The live bait is then used by fishermen who depart from several sportfishing locations around San Diego. Pelicans, egrets, black-crowned night herons and gulls often perch on the sides of idle live bait boats. Perhaps they think something tasty will magically appear!
The distant Navy ships are an oiler and two active aircraft carriers docked at Naval Air Station North Island, situated on the northern half of Coronado Island. The two homeported carriers that you can glimpse are the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Ronald Reagan.
Cool San Diego Sights! 