San Diego Bay and quite a lot of money divide Coronado – a place repaying a half-day trip – from the rest of the city. The carefully groomed and very suburban neighbourhood sits at the head of an isthmus, which it shares with a large naval air station.

The navy keeps the present-day local economy on a sound footing, but Coronado’s first taste of wealth came with the completion of the Hotel Del Coronado (http://hoteldel.com) in the late 1880s, a conglomeration of wooden towers, turrets and other fanciful flourishes of Victorian architecture spread across a large chunk of a 4,000-acre site. Marketed as a “dream resort,” the swish hotel drew moneyed Easterners on the new cross-country railway with the promise of luxury and sophistication at a time when the rest of California was spit-and-sawdust frontier territory.

By the 1920s, no discerning sybarite could visit San Diego without showing him-or herself at the “Del.” The story of the hotel, its construction, its famous guests, and its starring role alongside Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in the 1955 film Some Like it Hot is outlined in a small museum.

From the time of the hotel’s opening until the completion of the two-mile long Coronado Bridge in 1969, the only way to reach Coronado from Downtown San Diego was by ferry. Cunningly, the city authorities suspended the ferry service until the bridge had paid for itself (by way of the tolls collected at the Coronado end). Nowadays, the ferry makes the 15-minute ride between the Embarcadero and Coronado frequently throughout the day, and docks at Coronado’s Old Ferry Landing, which, despite its name, dates only from 1987 and is a fairly uninteresting retail and restaurant complex. A stroll along Orange Avenue, towards the Hotel Del Coronado, offers a choice of lunch places.