Laguna Beach

Laguna Beach reveals itself in increments, one hidden staircase at a time. Lia and I counted at least a dozen public beach access points along Pacific Coast Highway, each one dropping through someone’s backyard-adjacent bluff to a different sliver of sand and turquoise water below. We picked Thousand Steps Beach on our first morning — nowhere near a thousand steps, mercifully, but enough of a climb down that we had the tide pools almost entirely to ourselves, sea anemones and hermit crabs going about their business in shallow rock pools while the fog burned off overhead.

Galleries and Forest Avenue

Laguna Beach has called itself an artists’ colony since the early 1900s, when plein-air painters drawn by the coastal light established studios in the hills, and that identity still shapes downtown. Forest Avenue and the surrounding streets are dense with galleries, from serious fine-art spaces to funkier storefronts selling driftwood sculpture, and every first Thursday the whole district opens for a gallery walk with wine poured freely into plastic cups. We wandered in without a plan, ended up talking for twenty minutes with a painter about the particular blue-green of the local water, and left with a small watercolor neither of us had budgeted for.

Main Beach and the coves

By afternoon we’d drifted to Main Beach, the town’s social heart, where a boardwalk separates volleyball courts from a wide stretch of sand and a wooden lifeguard tower straight out of a postcard. From there we walked the coastal path north toward Crescent Bay Point Park, pausing at overlooks above coves with names like Divers Cove and Shaw’s Cove, each one a slightly different shade of blue-green depending on the light. As sunset approached, we found a spot on the rocks above Heisler Park, watching paddleboarders glide across water gone the color of hammered copper, and understood immediately why Laguna’s cliffside real estate commands the prices it does.

Getting There

John Wayne Airport in nearby Santa Ana is the closest major airport, about a 30-minute drive north on the 73 toll road or Pacific Coast Highway. From Los Angeles, Laguna Beach sits roughly 50 miles south, an hour to ninety minutes depending on traffic along I-5 or the more scenic, slower PCH route hugging the coastline. Once in town, parking near the coves fills fast on weekends, so a rental car is best paired with the free trolley that loops between Main Beach and the surrounding canyons and coves all summer long.