La Jolla, Mission Bay and the Cove
Where to swim laps
If you like to keep swimming while you are away, this is a very good place to do it. There is a fifty-metre pool fifteen minutes up the coast with the Pacific in front of it, some of the calmest open water in California a short walk down the hill, and the Cove for the swim you will still be talking about when you get home.
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Our pick
Coggan Family Aquatic Complex
800 Nautilus Street, La Jolla, about fifteen minutes from the house. This is the one for a proper session. Olympic-size, 25 yards by 50 metres, so it runs long course as well as short, with public lap swimming through the week. It is the home pool for Wind N Sea Masters and for competitive swimming, which is the tell: the lanes are sorted by speed and everyone in them knows how that works, so you can settle in and count lengths.
The water: and then there is the view. The pool sits high enough on the hill that the deck looks out over the ocean, which is a strange and very good thing to notice every time you turn your head to breathe.
Adult drop-in was $17 at the time of writing. Check the current rate and, more importantly, that week’s lap schedule before you drive over: lanes get given to squads and lessons, and the timetable changes with the season.
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The city pools
San Diego runs a set of public pools with drop-in lap hours, and they are a fraction of the price of anywhere else on this page. Bud Kearns in Balboa Park is the handsome old one; Kearny Mesa and Allied Gardens are the workaday ones with reliable morning hours. None is close to the house, twenty minutes plus, and the schedules are genuinely complicated, with lanes disappearing into lessons and squad time. Look at the actual timetable for the actual day before you set off.
The water: none to speak of. This is the cheap-and-functional option, not the scenic one.
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The YMCAs
Mission Valley has the big outdoor fifty-metre pool and a large masters programme; Copley-Price and Toby Wells are the other two within reach. They sell day passes to visitors, which makes them the simplest answer if you want a pool, a gym and a shower in one stop and do not want to think about it. Ring ahead to check the day rate and whether they want to see identification.
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The Plunge, Mission Beach
The historic indoor pool at Belmont Park, and by some distance the closest to the house: you can cycle there along the beach path. Worth a look on the grounds of proximity alone, but check first whether lap hours are running and how long the sessions are: it is a resort pool with a swim programme attached rather than the other way round, so the sessions are short and the lanes are shared.
Open water, which is the real answer
This is San Diego. Plenty of people here do not go near a pool between May and October.
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Sail Bay and Mission Bay
A few minutes down the hill and flat as a millpond: no surf, no rips, and the triathletes are out there most mornings for exactly that reason. Swim parallel to the shore rather than across, keep out of the channel, and wear a bright cap. The Fanuel Street Park end of Sail Bay is the usual place to leave a towel.
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La Jolla Cove and the Shores
The famous one. There is a marked buoy line off the Cove and a swimming club that has been going for a century, and on a clear morning it is one of the great swims anywhere. It is also proper open water: swell, boat traffic outside the buoys, and a large population of sea lions who are wildlife rather than scenery. La Jolla Shores is the gentler entry and the sensible first go. More on both on the La Jolla page.
What the water is actually like. Roughly the high fifties Fahrenheit in late winter and the high sixties to low seventies by September. Most people here wear a wetsuit from about November to May and nothing much in late summer, but that varies more by person than by month. Swim with somebody, or at least tell somebody, and use a tow float, because the boat traffic cannot see a head.
None of this page is a substitute for lifeguard advice on the day. Conditions on this coast change hour to hour, and the flags and the people in the towers are the authority, not a website.
How to actually get in
Short answer: none of this books the way a restaurant books.
- Not OpenTable, not Resy, not any of that. Those are restaurant systems and no pool here uses them. Ignore anything that offers to reserve you a swim through one.
- Mostly you just turn up and pay. Drop-in at the desk, card or cash, for the session that is running. That is how the city pools work and how Coggan works.
- Look at the timetable first, on the operator’s own site. This is the step people skip and then regret. Lap hours are not all day: they are blocks, they differ by day, they change with the school term and the season, and a pool that has lap swimming does not have it at four o’clock on a Tuesday. Find the current week, not a PDF from two years ago.
- Where booking exists, it is on that operator’s own page. Some pools took up online lane reservations and kept them. If the site has a booking button, use it: a reserved lane on a busy morning is worth the two minutes.
- Ring if the schedule is ambiguous. Aquatics desks answer the phone and know things the website does not: which lanes are under a squad this week, whether the pool is closed for maintenance, whether the day rate went up. One call beats a wasted drive.
- For the YMCAs, ask about the day pass specifically. Rates for non-members vary by branch and some ask for photographic identification.
Rates, opening hours and lap schedules change. The drop-in price above was current when this was written and will not stay that way. Everything here is worth confirming with the pool before you go. Nothing on this page is paid or sponsored.