How to spend two days in San Diego

The Gaslamp Quarter itself has a lot of interesting shopping and restaurants. Past that, I'd recommend seeing if you can make it out to Balboa Park. The San Diego Zoo (in my biased opinion the best out there) and a number of interesting museums are in that area. I am partial to the Reuben H Fleet Science Museum.

http://sandiego.about.com/od/diningandnightlife/tp/sd_brews.htm Not having visited any, I'd call Stone Brewery and Lost Abbey the two big don't miss breweries based on their beers alone, but a little website research would probably cook up the best one to go to for lunch, which for just a flight, etc.

what kind of stuff is around there that is walking distance? Touristy stuff, nightclubs and restaurants. The Westin is right next to a mall, but it's a pretty cool mall if you can deal with super-postmodern 80s architecture. There might be a few decent bars sprinkled here and there, but you're probably going to want to head uptown a bit. Depending on your definition of walking distance, you'll want to get to Little Italy, Mission Hills and Hillcrest, which range from 1-3 miles away. Easy bus connection on the 3 or 11 lines though to Hillcrest. Hillcrest and Mission Hills each have a ton of wine bars. There's also one closer to downtown that looks interesting called Wetstone, on 4th or 5th around Fir St. Hillcrest has a bunch of bookstores, our big art house theater, and a couple little music stores. It's small, but M-Theory Music on Washington & Goldfinch over in Mission Hills has a decent selection of new and used, as well as sort of peripheral music stuff - I've gotten a bunch of the 33 1/3 books there.

For music, check out https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=2912+University+Ave.+san+diego&hl=en&sll=43.656877,-79.32085&sspn=0.579239,1.229095&hnear=2912+University+Ave,+San+Diego,+California+92104,+United+States&t=m&z=16 in North Park. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SxQSwD8Az0&noredirect=1

I came to second the Zoo. It's just amazing and really interesting from a conservation and preservation standpoint. You should be able to find Zoo tours, or ways to get there, ask at your hotel.

For music, check out Off the Record in North Park. Here is Nirvana playing there in 1991. Nitpick: the Nirvana clip is at Off the Record's old location on 5th in Hillcrest - they've since moved to University Avenue where Beardman notes. Still a great shop.

The kind of stuff you like is abundant in Hillcrest/North Park, a little north of Balboa Park. San Diego is a world class city for beer if you're into it, and most of the beer pubs are in that area. Stone itself is way the heck north and you'd need a rental car and probably more time.

Balboa park is a great urban park with cool trees, gardens, museums, a theater, etc. This scavenger hunt is is all kinds of awesome. You're suposed to be some kind of paranormal investigator...when you find these little hidden badges and call a number on your cell phone you hear the next installment of the story (related to local history). http://giskin.org/giskinrevealed.htm

During my trip to San Diego, I thought that http://www.yelp.com/biz/wet-willies-san-diego was really fun. Its basically a bar where everything comes from a slushy machine.