San Diego: Old Town Trolley Tour (July 2018)



My spouse and I took the Old Town Trolley Tour of San Diego on a Friday morning in early July 2018. Old Town Trolley Tours was created in the early 1970s in Key West Florida, but then branched out to other US cities, including Boston, Nashville, San Diego, Savannah, St. Augustine, and Washington DC. Do not confuse the Old Town Trolley with the San Diego Trolley (SDT), the light-rail system operated by the city metropolitan transit system (MTS). The Old Town Trolley San Diego tour costs about $30 per adult, although you can get discounts by booking online or through your hotel; you can also save on other attraction admissions by purchasing various combination tickets. The basic Old Town Trolley ticket includes hop on-hop off trolley access as well as entry to some museums, including the Old Town Sheriff’s Museum, Casa De Aguirre, Mormon Battalion Historic Site, Old Town Railroad Depot, African Museum, Chinese Historical Museum, Coronado Historical Museum, Veterans Museum, Timken Museum of Art, and Firehouse Museum (a few of which offer complimentary admission anyway). 

San Diego trolley stops include the Gaslamp District, Horton Plaza, Coronado Island, Convention Center, Little Italy, Balboa Park, Old Town, and Embarcadero/Seaport Village. (There is also a separate beach tour that takes you to La Jolla and Mt. Soledad.) All trolleys stop in Old Town San Diego, where you must exit the trolley. (If you haven’t paid your fare yet, you can do so here.) If you don’t want to explore Old Town, you’ll have to wait about 20 minutes to catch the next trolley to continue the route. The entire circuit takes about 2 hours without hopping on and off, although you are travelling on city streets and highways, so traffic can slow you down. Trolleys stop at each location approximately every 20 minutes.

On the trolley; seats toward the front have single-hung glass windows that open halfway, whereas seats toward the back have larger (window) openings that allow better airflow. (We prefer double-decker, open-top, hop-on/hop-off type vehicles, but those did not appear to be available in San Diego.) Drivers were friendly and entertaining.

We enjoyed our day on the San Diego hop-on/hop-off Old Town Trolley. It gave us a great overview of the city without having to drive ourselves.












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