The Best Things to Do in San Diego, by the Record
The best things to do in San Diego, by the professional record: Forbes Travel Guide and Vogue have both weighed in, and their honors are what rank this list. The Spa at Fairmont Grand Del Mar comes out on top, and the record runs deepest in Carlsbad and La Jolla.
The Spa At Rancho Valencia and Cal-a-Vie Health Spa hold the next two places. Forbes Travel Guide shows up on more of this list than any other guide, with Vogue next.
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A château-style health spa and retreat less than an hour from San Diego, built with actual French structures shipped over stone by stone, including a centuries-old chapel. The 32 private villas and manicured grounds lean hard into the Provençal fantasy, while the programming runs from interval training to trapeze yoga. Notably, they feed you real bread and real coffee. Vogue named it one of the 100 Best Spas in the World, and Oprah's a regular.
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Twenty-five miles of private hiking trails wind through the property before you've even booked a massage, which tells you something about the scale of this all-inclusive wellness retreat outside San Diego. The Golden Door has been doing the spa week thing since before it was a thing, and it carries that history lightly: think summer camp for people whose summers cost considerably more. Vogue named it among the 100 Best Spas in the World.
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A spa where the treatments are essentially a love letter to the cliffs outside: coastal sage scrubs, pine exfoliation, and seawater hydrotherapy baths that borrow directly from the landscape. The champagne facial, using yeast extracts, sounds like a premise from a sketch show but draws a loyal following. A Forbes Four Star property, and the kind of afternoon that makes driving back to reality feel genuinely inconvenient.