Newport Beach is the California that exists in your imagination before you ever visit. Sailboats in a calm harbor. Palm trees lining a wide beach. Dolphins surfing the morning waves. Sunsets so orange they look like the sky is melting. It is almost unfairly beautiful, and the locals know it, and they do not apologize for any of it.
Located in Orange County about an hour south of Los Angeles, Newport Beach is a collection of neighborhoods strung along a stretch of coast that includes everything from world-class surfing to quiet tide pools to a historic amusement zone on a pier. It is the kind of place where you come for a weekend and start checking real estate listings by Sunday afternoon.
Balboa Pier and the Peninsula
The Balboa Peninsula is a long, narrow strip of sand with the Pacific Ocean on one side and Newport Harbor on the other. Walk the boardwalk from Newport Pier to Balboa Pier and you will pass surf shops, taco stands, beachside cottages, and some of the most expensive real estate in California, all in about three miles. The Wedge at the tip of the peninsula is famous for bodyboarding, with waves that can reach 20 feet and break in water shallow enough to count the rocks on the bottom.
Take the Balboa Island Ferry, a tiny car ferry that has been crossing the harbor since 1919. It costs a couple of dollars, takes about three minutes, and drops you on Balboa Island, where you can walk Marine Avenue and get a frozen banana dipped in chocolate, which is the unofficial food of Newport Beach and has been since the 1940s.
The Harbor
Newport Harbor is one of the largest recreational harbors in the West Coast, and on any given day it is filled with sailboats, yachts, paddleboards, kayaks, and the occasional pod of dolphins. Rent a Duffy electric boat and cruise the harbor at sunset. No boating experience needed, they top out at about 5 mph, and the quiet electric motor means you can actually hear the water and the gulls and the sound of someone on a nearby yacht popping a champagne cork.
The harbor is surrounded by neighborhoods with names like Lido Isle and Linda Isle and Bay Island, and the houses that line the waterfront range from charming beach cottages to massive waterfront mansions. During the holidays, the harbor hosts the Christmas Boat Parade, where hundreds of decorated boats cruise through the harbor in a floating light show that draws tens of thousands of spectators.
Crystal Cove Tide Pools
Crystal Cove State Park sits just south of Newport Beach, and at low tide the rocky shoreline reveals pools teeming with sea anemones, hermit crabs, sea stars, and small fish. This is the kind of place that reminds you why you loved the ocean as a kid. Get down on your knees, look into the pools, and watch tiny worlds happening in miniature. Sea anemones close when you touch them (gently). Hermit crabs carry their homes on their backs. Bright orange garibaldi fish dart between the rocks.
The historic Crystal Cove cottages line the beach above the tide pools. These 1920s and 1930s beach cottages have been preserved and some are available for overnight stays. They have no TV, no WiFi, and no pretense. Just the sound of the waves, a front porch, and the kind of simple beach living that barely exists anywhere in California anymore.
The Sunset
Newport Beach sunsets are legendary in Orange County, and my favorite spot to watch them is from the jetty at the end of the Balboa Peninsula. The waves break right in front of you, the sand goes from gold to orange to pink as the sun drops, and on a good evening the sky puts on a show that makes everyone on the beach stop what they are doing and just watch.
Newport Beach is not the cheapest place in California and it is not the most adventurous. But it might be the most purely pleasant. Clean beaches, calm harbor, good food, beautiful weather 300 days a year, and a pace of life that feels like everyone agreed to slow down just a little. If California is a state of mind, Newport Beach is where that state of mind lives full-time.
