Gaslamp Quarter

Vibrant, eclectic, and endlessly entertaining, the Gaslamp Quarter covers more than 16 city blocks of downtown San Diego, with hundreds of specialty shops and dozens of trendy restaurants, bars and avant-garde playhouses. Most of the shops keep late hours, so delightful shopping, drinking, and dining can occur virtually simultaneously. Cutting-edge women's fashions elbow up against exclusive art galleries, while nearby is a hardware store founded more than 100 years ago. The San Diego Convention Center is just steps away from the Gaslamp, and during major conventions the flow of souvenir-hunting attendees floods the area. For an upscale shopping mall experience, the adjacent Horton Plaza offers major department stores and a hundred or so mall shops set in an architecturally amusing maze of bridges, stairways, and intricately tiled walls. If you have just a few hours to devote to shopping, spend the time and the money here.