2016/Location

WikiConference 2016 will be held in San Diego, California at the San Diego Central Public Library. The San Diego Central Public Library is located in the Gaslamp Quarter of downtown San Diego. (Wikipedia article)

Balboa Park

Preceding the main conference, the Wiki Culture Crawl day is Friday, October 7. Details will be announced, but the focus is on the Balboa Park Museums.

• For general information on visiting San Diego, see WikiTravel and the San Diego Tourism Authority.
• For pictures of the San Diego Central Public Library on Commons, click here.
• For pictures of Balboa Park on Commons, click here.

Where to stay

For lodging and transportation information, see our Travel page.

Safety

The area in and around the library has a significant transient population, so participants are advised to secure their belongings. In general, as in any large city, people are advised to travel in groups after dark.

International visitors

For the perspective of other nations on safety of travel to the United States, please see the travel advice of:

• Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade United States travel page
• Global Affair Canada's United States travel page
• New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade United States travel page
• United Kingdom's Foreign Office United States travel page

Tijuana

For participants interested in travel to Mexico, please read Global Affairs Canada's Mexico Travel Warning and the U.S. State Department's Mexico Travel Warning. If someone wants to travel to Mexico, the requirements for crossing the border are here.

Things to do

The light rail trolley serves San Diego and outlying areas

The San Diego Tourism Authority has an extensive website with information on tourism options. The Travel Channel also lists many activities as well as information on restaurants.

San Diego is well-known for its World-famous Zoo in Balboa Park and Sea World.

San Diego is noted for a number of breweries, and there is a web site with additional details.

More adventurous conference attendees may enjoy touring outlying portions of the city using a San Diego Trolley pass, viewing coastal scenery from the connecting Coaster to Oceanside, or taking the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner trains through the undeveloped terrain of Camp Pendleton.

A tour of the city waterfront is via one of the harbor cruises: [1] or [2]. The harbor tours offer some exposure to San Diego's rich history as the primary west coast port of the United States Navy. The east shore of the south end of San Diego Bay was developed as a destroyer base when the battleship fleet was transferred to the Pacific in 1919; and continues to be the major base for surface ships of intermediate size. The bay is rather shallow for larger ships, which are further limited by the overhead clearance of the bridge to Coronado. Aircraft carriers berth at North Island near the northern end of the west shore of the bay. Southern California offered optimum flying conditions for naval aviation pioneers in what became the North Island Naval Air Station. Near Point Loma on the north shore of the bay opening to the Pacific is a submarine base and the historic site of technical innovations by the Navy Electronics Laboratory. North of San Diego is the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station where the Top Gun fighter school originated.

Mission Bay, near the mouth of the San Diego River north of Point Loma, is the largest man-made aquatic park in the United States with miles of sandy beaches and pedestrian paths to enjoy the southern California coastal climate in a park-like atmosphere.