Christine Delsol spent eight years as a travel editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. She has won numerous prestigious travel writing awards. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and daughter.

Maribeth Mellin is an award-wining journalist and photographer.She has authored books on Mexico, California, Costa Rica, Peru, Argentina and Hawaii. When not traveling the globe,she enjoys time at home with her husband near the beach in San Diego.

Los Angeles and San Diego, the two major cities of southern California, are radically different from most others in America, and thus fascinating to visit. Los Angeles harbors Hollywood, and all its associated film-making studios and sites, as well as giant museums, countless nightspots with live entertainment, symphonic halls and theaters, numerous ethnic communities, and adjoining beach towns and ocean ports. San Diego, on the border with Mexico, with one of the best climates in America, is a giant metropolis (1,300,000 residents in the city itself, 3 million in the city and suburbs) but with many features of a resort: dozens of top beaches and parks, famed ethnic restaurants, Sea World and a spectacular Zoo, all attracting tens of millions of visitors each year. Our authors, Christine Delsol and Maribeth Mellin, both Californians, have filled our "Easy Guide" with their most cherished preferences in lodgings, meals, attractions and shopping, carefully balanced to offer either luxury or thrift.