Jaunted

Tags: San Diego Zoo / Zoos / San Diego Travel / California Travel / Green Travel / → All Tags

The San Diego Zoo Brings a Porcupine to New York to Talk Polar Bears

The famous San Diego Zoo is all over the news lately, what their baby panda and being the first zoo to get added to Google Map's streetview, but the good stuff just keeps on coming with the spring opening of their new Polar Bear Plunge exhibit.

Yesterday in New York, we swung by a hotel penthouse to say hi to a few of the San Diego Zoo's animal handlers and staff, who had brought some of the zoo's most portable critters to town (even though they had to take a cargo plane) for appearances on morning shows and the like. There were two endangered tortoises, as you can see above, but also a prehensile-tailed porcupine, who is just about the cutest thing ever and the subject of more photos after the jump.

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Tags: Restaurant Week / Food Travel / San Diego Travel / San Diego Restaurants / Restaurants / → All Tags

The Five Best Places to Dine During San Diego Restaurant Week

Suite & Tender

Foodies will want to prepare their stomachs for a week of eating out with multiple-course meals on the cheap. San Diego Restaurant Week kicks off today and ends January 22.

The wintertime event allows you to test out the city's best restaurants for half-price or even better. About 200 participating restaurants offer three-course prix fixe meals for either $20, $30 or $40; we say do one of each! Here are our picks for the week's best grub..

After the jump, our Top 5 Picks for SD's Restaurant Week

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Tags: Volunteer Travel / Animal Travel / San Diego Travel / San Diego Zoo / → All Tags

How To Get Closer To The San Diego Zoo's New Baby Panda

It seems like all the world's a-twitter today over the San Diego Zoo's 4 1/2 month old giant panda, Yun Zi. The cub stepped outside his den on Monday to explore an outdoor area where he checked out the bushes, played with his mom and climbed on tree branches. This is one of the first times Yun Zi has left his den, so it's causing quite a stir at the zoo and online of course, where people can't seem to get enough of newly posted pictures and video of the baby.

If you want to do more than just gawk at the animals in the San Diego Zoo, they have a volunteer program that offers both short-term and long-term opportunities. Some of the positions available include Interpretive Volunteers who provide information about wildlife conservation to guests, Information ambassadors who answer questions and provide assistance throughout the zoo and Conservation Research Volunteers who usually have a science background and help out in the Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research.

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Tags: San Diego Zoo / Holidays / Zoos / San Diego Travel / California Travel / → All Tags

Head To the Famous San Diego Zoo For Your Dose of Christmas Lights

While people crowd downtown San Diego's Horton Plaza for ice skating and shopping around this time of year, the city offers a holiday alternative at the , which decks itself out in lights, fake snow and themed activities for Jungle Bells.

A highlight of the Jungle Bells celebration, which lasts until January 2, is the eco-friendly synthetic ice rink, the first time the zoo's offered the feature. But don't expect Rockefeller Center. This small rink is better for wobbly kiddies learning how to skate than adults looking to practice their figure eights.

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Tags: Neighborhoods to Know and Go / San Diego Travel / Shopping Travel / San Diego Restaurants / → All Tags

Neighborhoods To Know And Go: San Diego's North Park

San Diego's beaches get top billing for obvious reasons, but some of the city's best places to hang are offshore, like hipster hub North Park. It used to be a rough place, but then gentrification started and with it came boutiques, cafes and the neighborhood's own restaurant row. North Park gets its hipster cred from its artsy side, with galleries and other cultural institutions calling it home. Centered around University Avenue and 30th Street, the nabe has a central location; it's only 10 minutes away from the beaches and blocks from Balboa Park.

Get hip to North Park after the jump.

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Tags: Holiday Travel / San Diego Travel / California Travel / Events / → All Tags

San Diego's December Nights Spread Holiday Cheer Under The Palm Trees

It's hard to feel the holiday vibe in San Diego when the temps hover at 80 degrees and the only trees you see are of the palm variety. But when traditional events like the Balboa Park's 32nd annual December Nights roll around, it starts to feel a lot like Christmas.

San Diego's kick-off to the season will take place December 4 from 5 to 10 p.m. and December 5 from noon to 10 p.m. in Balboa Park. More than 300,000 revelers are expected to attend December Nights, the largest free community festival in the city. Start off the festivities at the International Christmas Festival at the House of Pacific Relations Cottages. There you can get eats from all around the globe like Polish kielbasa, Panamanian fried plantains and Filipino lumpia, a yummy kind of egg roll. But wait, there's so much more...

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Tags: Food Festivals / Food Travel / San Diego Travel / California Travel / → All Tags

Get The Fork To San Diego For SoCal's Largest Foodie Event

Foodies will want to pack their tank tops and head west to the sixth annual San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival from November 18 to 22. Southern California's largest wine and food fest will feature culinary stars like James Beard Foundation Award winner for Best American Chef, Southwest, Alex Stratta of the two-star Michelin-rated ALEX at the Wynn Las Vegas; Cooking Light Magazine’s Executive Chef Billy Strynkowski; Peter Mondavi Jr. of Charles Krug winery; James Beard Foundation Award winner for Best Chef, Paul Bartolotta of Bartolotta at the Wynn Las Vegas, celebrity TV star Sam Zien of Sam the Cooking Guy.

The five-day festival will host more than 170 wineries, 70 fine-dining restaurants, gourmet food companies, wine-tasting seminars, celebrity artists, cooking classes by award-winning chefs and more. It's expected to draw 8,000 wine and food enthusiasts.

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Tags: Beer Travel / Beer Festival / Drunk Travel / Drinking / San Diego Travel / → All Tags

Guzzle The Nation's Best Brews At San Diego Beer Week

When you think of the U.S.'s best beer cities, places like New York, Portland and Philly always pop into mind. But according to Men's Journal, if you want to guzzle the nation's best brew, you have to head to San Diego. There's no better time to sample some of the city's suds than San Diego Beer Week from November 6 to 15.

San Diego County boasts 33 breweries, and the first-time Beer Week will showcase the local craft beers in more than 100 events, including beer tastings, beer dinners and home-brewing demonstrations. And it isn't just bars that will take part. Restaurants want to tap into Beer Week's potential. "We are encouraging breweries to push the envelope and create events with places not typically associated with craft beer. We know we’ll have support from beer enthusiasts, but we want to reach people who might not know about San Diego’s craft beer scene,” says Colby Chandler, president of the San Diego Brewers Guild, the event's sponsor.

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Tags: Prime-Plane-Spotting-Map / Plane Spotting / San Diego Travel / San Diego / SAN / Southwest Airlines / → All Tags

Plane-Spotting In San Diego Could Become A Literal Kiss-And-Fly

Plane spotting everything from legacy carriers to LCCs isn't all that difficult outside of San Diego International Airport with the hilly terrain, but there's one specific spot that lines up so well with the end of one of the runways that we simply must tell you about it. It's a parking garage.

Specifically, it's Aladdin's Parking Garage, at Kettner Boulevard and West Laurel Street, and it's a multi-level airport parking structure situated so perfectly for watching the activity on the runways at the airport. That said, the parking garage doesn't particularly like their reputation as a prime plane spotting location, and there are signs warning of "no loitering." But until they put up signs that warn "no making out," we'll keep coming back for a little literal Kiss-and-Fly.

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Tags: Restaurant Week / Food Travel / San Diego Travel / → All Tags

Our Top Five Picks For San Diego's Extended Restaurant Week

Get cheap French eats at Bleu Bohème during San Diego Restaurant Week.

The Restaurant Weeks in New York and LA attracted so many diners that the cities decided to add second courses of the culinary event. San Diego is feeling just as generous, also dishing out extra days for Restaurant Week by adding a fall event to the original offerings which were supposed to end last week.

Officials have extended San Diego Restaurant "Week" until September 25. You'd think that all of this Restaurant Week love should be a hint to restaurants that they should permanently add affordable three-course menus during this recession. Still, until they get a clue, we'll recommend some additional places in San Diego where you can get a great meal deal during the extension.

Our Top Five Picks for the San Diego Restaurant Week extension, after the jump.

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Our Top Picks For The Final Days Of San Diego Restaurant Week

The Marine Room serves up a deal for Restaurant Week.

If you've wanted to try out a restaurant or two, there's still a couple days left to put yourself in a food coma during San Diego Restaurant Week, which runs through September 18. More than 180 restaurants are offering sweet deals for three-course meals as part of the fifth annual event.

San Diego Restaurant Week, which usually runs in January, is making its fall debut. This marks the second time this year that Restaurant Week has invaded local restaurants. It seems like this marketing ploy to help struggling restaurants is a new trend, since L.A. also recently made its Restaurant Week a semiannual event. But hey, we'll take it to get some cheap, yummy eats. Restaurants all across the county, from Escondido to Coronado, feature special menus with local, seasonal ingredients. You can score some good discounts, since the prix fixe meals come in packages of $20, $30 or $40, though tax, beverages and gratuity aren't included.

Check out Jaunted's picks after the jump.

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Tags: Theater Travel / Culture Travel / William Shakespeare / Festivals / San Diego Travel / Events / → All Tags

Our Top Three Play Picks For San Diego's Shakespeare Festival

In the Old Globe’s Summer Shakespeare Festival production of Cyrano de Bergerac, Patrick Page plays the nasally-well-endowed titular character and Dana Green stars as Roxane.

If you are looking to wind down the season with one more alfresco outing, head to San Diego's Old Globe Theatre for the Summer Shakespeare Festival. The 74th annual fest offers Bard classics Twelfth Night and Coriolanus and in a break with tradition, Cyrano de Bergerac, the first non-Shakespeare play the theater has featured since it revived the festival five years ago.

The three productions rotate nightly in the Globe’s outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre through September 27. This way, if you're in town for a couple of days, you can catch all three. But if you can only make a day or two, here's a rundown of the shows to help you decide which play to see:

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