Santa Monica

We reached Santa Monica the way a lot of people do, at the tail end of a much longer drive, and there is something genuinely moving about watching a highway that starts in Chicago simply dissolve into the Pacific. Lia and I stood at the “End of the Trail” sign near the pier, footsore and slightly disbelieving, before wandering out onto the pier itself — part carnival, part fishing dock, part unofficial monument to the whole idea of driving west until you run out of country. Below us, surfers paddled out past the pilings while a Ferris wheel spun lazily against a sky doing its famous California pink.

The pier and Third Street

Pacific Park, the small amusement park built directly onto the pier, has occupied this spot in some form since 1916, and its solar-powered Ferris wheel has become one of the most photographed rides in America. We rode it right at dusk, the whole bay lighting up gold below us, then wandered a few blocks inland to the Third Street Promenade, a pedestrian-only stretch of shops, street performers, and outdoor cafés that stays lively well past dark. Lia got pulled into an impromptu magic show by a street performer working the crowd near a fountain, and we lost a genuinely embarrassing amount of time watching him work the block.

Palisades Park and the bluffs

Just above the beach, Palisades Park runs along a bluff overlooking the Pacific for nearly two miles, its palm-lined paths popular with joggers, tai chi groups, and tourists snapping photos of the famous camera-ready view down to the pier. We walked it slowly one morning with coffee, watching paragliders launch off the cliffs near the northern end and drift out over the sand, and stopped at the small totem pole and Camera Obscura building that have quietly occupied the park for decades. The bluff drops away sharply toward the Pacific Coast Highway below, giving the whole stretch a genuine sense of edge-of-the-continent drama.

Main Street and the beach

South of the pier, Main Street offers a quieter, more residential version of Santa Monica — boutiques, farmers market stalls on weekends, and the entrance to Venice’s boardwalk just a short walk further along the sand. We rented bikes and rode the beach path both directions, past volleyball courts, muscle-beach gyms, and a long stretch of genuinely excellent people-watching, before collapsing onto the sand ourselves for the last hour of daylight, salt air thick and the pier lights just starting to flicker on behind us.

Getting There

Santa Monica sits about twenty minutes from Los Angeles International Airport when traffic cooperates, which, this being LA, it often does not — budget closer to forty-five minutes to an hour. From downtown Los Angeles, the drive west on the 10 Freeway takes roughly thirty minutes outside rush hour, and once in Santa Monica, the pier, promenade, and beach path are all comfortably walkable, with the Metro E Line also connecting directly to downtown LA for those skipping the car altogether.