Photos courtesy Newport Beach Conference & Visitors Bureau Surfers at The Wedge

Soft ocean breezes, chic style and plenty of shopping await at this popular seaside town.

As we motored our boat across the sparkling blue waters of Newport Bay Harbor, we passed a mansion on the nearby shore. It was an opulent mansion, certainly, but in the grand scheme of fancy mansions that line this magnificent waterway bisecting Newport Beach, just pretty much another mansion.

Our captain slowed our craft – from a bracing 5 mph to 3 – and pointed out the home. Nicolas Cage had recently sold the property, he explained, for a cool $35 million, a new record for Orange County and a nice chunk of change for a parcel that claims barely over half an acre. It has a dock that can accommodate boats more than 150 feet long and sits next to the former home of actor John Wayne.

Later that afternoon, we drove through the manicured neighborhoods of Balboa Peninsula, stopping at the southeast tip to kick off our shoes and dig our toes into the sand that leads to The Wedge, a spectacular shore break for suicidal surfers (Esquire magazine lists it as one of the “Top 60 Things Worth Shortening Your Life For”).

That evening, we settled in for dinner at Pelican Grill in the newly completed Resort at Pelican Hill on Newport Coast, which features 750-year-old olive trees imported from Italy and a swimming pool adorned with 1.1 million glass tiles. An appetizer of prawn cocktail was $20, a white asparagus salad was $18, and a slab of ahi was $35, plus $9.50 for a side of sautéed spinach.

Photo by Carey Sweet Newport sea lion

Suffice it to say that Newport Beach is no longer the sleepy seaside town where I spent so many childhood summers back in the ’80s, munching on ice cream cones and browsing vintage stores. With a nod toward the Irvine Company (the developer that morphed   much of the area into a Stepford Wives-perfect, master-planned community), today’s Newport Beach pulsates money, style and a healthy dose of touristy veneer.

During the Valley’s hot summer months, there’s nearly no other place I’d rather spend my days than this 40 square miles of balmy Mediterranean-like bliss about 50 miles south of Los Angeles (less than a 90-minute flight from Phoenix into Orange County’s John Wayne Airport). With its nine miles of beaches, the stretch of the Pacific fronting Newport Beach is one of the wealthiest communities in the United States. But travelers with more realistic budgets can enjoy plenty of affordable distractions.

For our boat cruise, for example, we chose Duffy, a simple-to-navigate electric rental that, when packed with nine of my closest friends, was about $10 a person for an hour of leisurely crawling past palatial homes, “small” yachts and the occasional sea lion sprawled out on a dock. You can tie up the boat to a waterfront restaurant like Woody’s Wharf and stop for a bread bowl of reasonably priced clam chowder, or pack a picnic to enjoy on the boat.

If you choose to brown-bag it, fill your lunchbox at Sabatino’s at the Lido Peninsula Marine Center. The menu is huge, but the specialty is sausage, curled in fat links stuffed with Sicilian goat cheese for a chewy-chunky, gooey gorgeousness that’s trimmed in a snappy, charred skin.


If you’d rather exercise your real legs (as opposed to your sea legs), try a spin on a rented bike. There are several bike rental shops between Balboa Pier and Newport Pier, and 23 miles of sidewalk bike trails to explore throughout the city. The thing to do is pedal, stop for some ocean action, pedal some more, peruse the stores on the Boardwalk, pedal some more, then grab a cocktail at Blackie’s by the Sea, an iconic dive bar overlooking the waves. The more adventurous should stay long enough to stumble down the block to Seaside Bakery for the $2 ham-and-cheese croissant served at 2 a.m.