We know you love Milwaukee. We do, too. Sometimes, though, it's good to get on plane and head out of town.

And we're happy to help. This summer and fall, OnMilwaukee.com is teaming up with AirTran Airways to offer six free "Recession Buster Getaways." Every two weeks, we'll preview a great destination, report on some of the bars, restaurants, shops and events that make them unique.

For our second destination, managing editor Bobby Tanzilo visited San Diego and had his cousin show him around.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- On a warmer than normal Friday night, Little Italy is hopping. Hungry patrons spill out on to the street awaiting restaurant tables and a long line snakes out of the legendary Filippi's Pizza Grotto -- a tradition here since the 1950s. San Diegans love Filippi's pizza.

Down the block at Zia's Bistro -- one of a number of Little Italy restaurants owned by the Busalacchi brothers (yes, they're related to the Milwaukee Busalacchis) -- guitarist and singer Daniele Spadavecchia is chatting with customers. When the dashing Alessandria, Italy native launches into his set -- a mix of gypsy jazz a la Django Reinhardt and Neapolitan classics -- everyone pays attention, especially -- Daniele's wife notices -- the young women seated nearby at the bar.

My first night in San Diego and I realize it's nothing like I expected.

Sun, Sand, Surf & Sailors

Of course, what everyone expects to find in San Diego, which is just 15 miles from Tijuana, Mexico: sun, sand, surfers and sailors. As one resident told me, "this is a military town."

That's because there are a handful of bases in and around San Diego and the city's shipyards have a number of warships under construction, it seems, at any given time.

But on the street, the casual and quick visitor wouldn't necessarily notice. In mid-July there are no groups of rabid sailors on the prowl in The Gaslamp Quarter (think an engorged Water Street with hotels and shopping added to the mix). If they are there, the military boys must be well camouflaged.

However, there is plenty of sun -- 68 percent of possible sunshine warms this oceanside (and bayside) city -- and the average temps range from 57 in December and January to 72.6 in August. Unsurprisingly, this tempered warmth fuels nearly year-round traffic at the many beaches that line the coast and the edges of Coronado Island.

But despite the unusual heat here during my two-day stay, I step on a beach exactly once -- on Coronado Island -- and that's to snap some pictures of the San Diego skyline.

Instead, this tourist is focused on checking out the culture (and the culture of wine) in and around San Diego.

And I start right there on Coronado Island, a chic-ish place dotted with boutiques, restaurants and built up to the sky with condo towers. After popping into Scottish Treasures in the Ferry Landing Marketplace for an Aero bar (a bit of blighty in the sunny southwest), I head out to the sprawling, historic Hotel del Coronado -- where "Some Like It Hot" was filmed exactly 50 years ago with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis -- and sit outside at Sheerwater restaurant, under an umbrella with a glass of wine and some crab and cheddar ale fondue and watch people on their way to the beaches. I also gaze beyond them out to Point Loma lighthouse -- lightly veiled in the foggy mist of the marine layer -- and the ships leaving the bay for the open water of the Pacific.

Exploring Balboa Park

With more than a million people in the city and three times that in the metro area, it's no surprise that San Diego has a world class tourist industry, especially when you add the beautiful weather and its access to the Pacific Ocean to the mix.

Balboa Park is perhaps THE major tourist magnet, with its campus of 15 museums and performing arts groups occupying the lovely Spanish Revival buildings constructed for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition.

The range of the museums is amazing, from the Museum of Man anthropological museum, to the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the Air & Space Museum, Centro Cultural de la Raza, San Diego Automotive Museum, Hall of Champions Sports Museum, Model Railroad Museum and on and on ...

The museums tend to offer bite-sized morsels, with the San Diego Museum of Art especially standing out for its collection of European Old Masters (Milwaukee Art Museum devotees will enjoy a handful of Francisco de Zurbarán paintings; the artist's haunting and huge "Saint Francis of Assisi in His Tomb" is a MAM standout).

I spend an inordinate amount of time in the galleries housing French painters from the 19th and 20th centuries, standing in front of works by Corot, Daumier and Modigliani.

Depending on your mood, this amalgam of museums is either a wonderland of history and wonder or a draining overload. Suggestion: don't try and see all of them at once.

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