The guardians of the image of San Diego had done a pretty good job of convincing me that there was more going on here than beaches and Steve & Barry’s (a mall chain store carrying Sarah Jessica Parker’s chic clothing with no piece costing more than $20, BITTEN). Even though I love beaches and SJP, I was happy to have my perception of San Diego expanded with a stay at The U.S. Grant, a walk-through of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum (it's not going to travel, you have to come here), a night of performance at The Old Globe’s open-air theater in the round, a trip to the indie boutique Spa Velia, and a hike in Torrey Pines State Park with Brazilian triathlete trainer Ricardo Rodrigues.

Ricardo was the first man candy offered up on the trip (whose reporters happened to all be women), but he was soon joined by two more ridiculously nice and good-looking men from Dimension One eco-friendly hot tubs, who invited us to the Dimension One factory to experience their two-star products – a hot tub designed for fitness workouts and another designed for wild and crazy Showgirls-style sex (remember the scene in the swimming pool?).

Hot tubs are to Southern California what snow is to Alaska, so I was surprised that our highbrow trip was taking this turn. Well, it turns out I am out of touch with recent advancements in the hot tub industry. There is nothing run of the mill about a $40K hot tub like the D1 AFS (Aquatic Fitness System), a "swim spa" that's one part resistance pool and one part circuit training station gym. Row, run in place, and do bicep curls and even pilates: All are twice as challenging but low-impact in water. And best of all, if you’re dripping sweat you’ll never know it. As the dudes, dressed alluringly in Dimension One plush terry-cloth robes, pointed out, this 19-foot-long hot tub only costs about $25 a month to power, and unlike you, it's low maintenance (just change the filter cartridge every six months – that’s less frequent than your Brita!). No assembly required either -- they ship it fully assembled, though you may need a crane to place it inside your den or on your roof. They even showed us what the internal system of the hot tub looked like without the pretty, molded plastic shell: a strange tangle of plastic tubing that resembles the human heart.

But the winner in my mind was the other model (possibly because I care more about sex than working out), the Amore Bay. Giggling nervously, the girls all got in that one, which was heated to a toasty 102 degrees to stimulate the production of oxytocin (the "cuddle" hormone). This baby is clearly the pride and joy of the designer, who launched into a story about how a wife of a solider that has been in Iraq for over a year told him that the special massage nozzle and strategically located jets on the seats (all designed for female pleasure) have kept her sane in his absence. My first reaction was, "Ew." But I suppose that if it was your very own, and you kept it reasonably clean, like you would your vibrator … "Yes, exactly," he said. "We like to say it's the largest, most expensive sex toy in the world."

The other "chick" features of the $17K Amore Bay include seats that fit a woman's curves, LED mood lighting that flashes pink and lavender, an iPod-compatible stereo dock, and these little spouting fountains that brought to mind the aforementioned unintentionally hilarious scene from Showgirls, where Kyle MacLachlan nearly drowns Elizabeth Berkley during in-pool coitus. This is a scene bound to be repeated now that an Amore Bay model has been shipped off to the Los Angeles house that will host the new season of MTV’s The Real World.

Cathay Che is The MOLI View's contributing editor for Travel & Leisure.