Trip to the Golden Coast
I spent this Memorial Day in sunny sunny Southern California (SoCal), where my boyfriend and I took a roadtrip up and down the Pacific coast. During my trip, we visited 5 beaches, ate at 13 restaurants and saw our family and many childhood friends! Overall, the trip was amazing and it really showed me what East Coasters must imagine when they comment that California is "the dream".
Here's a review of a few SoCal beaches I've visited, recommendations / reviews / photos of some delicious food and some great places to shop / things to do! It's a very long post, so just click below on what you want to read about. I also included a map of all these places for your convenience. Hope this comes in handy for some of you this summer when you make a visit.
To get yourself in the mood to visit SoCal, listen to Katy Perry's song California Gurls
BEACHES
MANHATTAN BEACH (Los Angeles)
Situated south of LAX, Manhattan Beach is one of the three "beach cities" along southern LA county (others being Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach). The sand oh so white and soft and the beach is wide enough to accomodate most of the romping around one would do. There is wooden pier that goes into the water with a little cafe at the end (didn't try it) and along the streets near the beach are lots of bars and restaurants perfect for happy hour for the lucky ones who can make it out here all the time! Fun fact: Manhattan Beach was named after one of the developer's hometowns (Manhattan NYC!) after a coin flip w/ the other guy. Also, the sand on Waikiki Beach is all from Manhattan Beach!
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Photo of Manhattan Beach sunset by szeke
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VENICE BEACH (Los Angeles)
Originally built in the early 1900's on some marshy land south of Santa Monica, Venice Beach was intended to be a resort town with romantic canals like its namesake in Italy. The circus-like street performers and vendors that line the beach today are a relic of the "pleasure pier" that the original developers created equipped with dance halls and roller coaster rides. After some bad management, LA annexed the small town, filled the canals and let the town continue to deteriorate into a "Slum by the Sea". This history explains a lot to me because I always wondered why such an expensive piece of real estate in LA turned into a Berkeley or Haight/Ashbury on the beach. It's definitely a fun place though, perfect for people watching and biking!
($6 / hour... what a deal!)
LAGUNA BEACH (Orange County)
I've never seen the reality TV show set here, but I can see why they decided to show off this idyllic part of SoCal for the world to see -- this place is BEAUTIFUL! The beach was super crowded when we went (probably because of the Memorial Day weekend), but Laguna has everything a beach should and more! The sand was soft (not as soft as Manhattan though) there were lots of happy kids/dogs/adults acting like kids, but the plus was that there were even dolphins swimming not far from shore (I thought this never happened outside of Flipper). The only con was that the area was a bit kelpy. Anyway aside from that, I LOVE this beach. The area around it has the usual beach shops, except more on the high end (think Carmel by the Sea / Pebble Beach for my NorCal folks).
NEWPORT BEACH (Orange County)
This is one of the beaches that I go to and try to grasp how much money I need to make to one day own a house on Ocean Blvd. The beach is off a steep cliff and has manmade rocky piers that stick out into the ocean. Great photo opp location (my boyfriend took a bunch of pictures on this pier that made it look like he was jumping into the sky). This is where I was when I realized that Katy Perry's line in California Gurls "I know a place [CA], where the grass is really greener" was true. Everything here looks like the saturation was turned way up (relative to New York and northern CA at least!). Do visit this beach!
TORREY PINES (San Diego)
[Photo from
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To be honest, I've only been here at night, but my San Diego native friend said this was the real/local beach to go to. While we were there, a red tide was happening. This turns the water
, but makes it glow this
florescent blue color at night
(it wasn't THIS blue when we went). This beach is one of those stand alone places with no shops around, so bring everything you need for the day!
** I found out later that red tide is actually a pretty bad thing.. It's an "explosion" of toxic, naturally occuring plankton that damages certain marine animals and makes most shellfish inedible. People think that the "first plague of Egypt" where blood filled the river in the Bible actually was a red tide.
LA JOLLA SHORES PARK (8200 Camino del Oro, San Diego)
I still can't believe how lucky UCSD students are to be right above this beach... I didn't walk around this area, but the beach must have been crazy crowded because a bunch of people were sitting / hanging out in the grassy park behind it!
This is also the beach where my boyfriend and his friends saw dolphins and sea otters too. So again, one of those places that make you go "ahh what a good life this could be"
LA JOLLA COVES (San Diego)
This is another small beach on Coast Blvd nestled between two sandstone rock formations. I think this one is more for sightseeing and taking beautiful photos.
FOOD
(
)
Los Angeles
(Arcadia -- ~30 minutes from downtown LA)
Famous Shanghai dumpling / soup dumpling restaurant chain. Worth the drive to the only US location (much faster and cheaper than flying to Taipei!). The Shanghai soup dumplings here have a very delicate thin skin, are always very soupy/juicy (but not as fatty tasting as Joe's Shanghai). The restaurant is also very efficient and clean. Besides the soup dumplings (they have pork or pork/crab.. I like pork better), other dishes I like are the stir fried rice cakes (nian gau) and the shrimp and pork dumplings (sao mai) are good too.
(Korea Town, Los Angeles)
After moving to New York, I thought I had it SO good with Ktown on 32nd Street. Then I came to Soowon Galbi and realized what I was missing out on this whole time! The Korean BBQ here is amazing -- the meat tastes super fresh and well marinated and they provide the rice and daikon wrap that is so hard to find in NY Ktown (if someone knows a good place, PLEASE tell me). Their seafood pancake was the perfect mix of batter, seafood and veggies, served on an iron plate so it didn't get cold while you worked on the other food. The service is also super friendly -- this surprised me I guess b/c I began to think the curt and discriminatory service at Kunjip was the norm!
Mac and Cheeza (Downtown LA)
Found this late night joint randomly in downtown LA. It's basically a mac and cheese buffet where you pick the size (go for the Daddy Mac if you're heading to a potluck), type of cheese, pasta, toppings etc and they bake it before your eyes! Sounds a little gimmicky, but the result was delicious. Not sure if it's overpriced since coming from Manhattan, everything seems pretty reasonable to me =X
[Photo by
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(Roaming all around LA)
I love food trucks and one that carries dim sum holds an even more special place in my heart. I wish they had this in NYC so I wouldn't have to take the 40 minute trek to Chinatown to satisfy my dim sum cravings. My boyfriend's good friend Alex is the owner, so I am a bit biased, but I (and many other
and
) think the dim sum here is delicious! The truck roams around LA for weekday lunch and also late night on most Thursdays through Saturdays. My favorite ones were the Shrimp Dumplings (Har Gow) and the Shrimp and Chive dumplings. He also has this Peking Duck Taco special which was delicious. I thought the prices were pretty reasonable, but some people on Yelp seem to disagree with me (I must be conditioned to NY prices ugh). It's around $2.75 for 3 dumplings and $3ish for everything else.
With the owner of The DimSum Truck, Alex
My visit to The DimSum Truck has piqued my interest in the LA food truck scene and I am definitely going to try other places the next time I visit. I am especially curious about this Kogi Truck that I heard made $1mm its first year! Anyone want to quit our full-time jobs and start one with me? =P
(Downtown LA)
Michelle from Coastalpolitan posted about this
as her favorite downtown restaurant and I could see why right away. The restaurant and gourmet bakery is housed in a very cavernous whitewashed roman style building, resembling a kind of upscale cafeteria. Service is nice and the food is good, well presented and reasonably priced. We went for brunch (Farmer's Breakfast and French Toast pictured below) and were looking forward to their much talked about Portebello Fries, but they don't offer them at lunch =( I'd say overall that the food wasn't so WOW that you'd drive out of your way to get there (like Ding Tai Feng), but the restaurant has style and ambiance, so if you're in the downtown area you should definitely stop by. On your way out, don't forget to try the macaroons that taste as good as they look! I was naturally attracted to the orange passionfruit macaroon, but they were out so they gave me a hazelnut one on the house along with the earl grey one we ordered (good service right?).
I feel like Rodeo is so sterile compared to 5th Avenue (or maybe just cleaner), but the southern part of it is a narrow curvy street that is modeled off the Steps in Rome. All the usual luxury shops like LV, Chanel, Cartier are there. I guess coming from New York, most shopping, unless it comes with impressive architecture, doesn't impress me anymore (oh don't I sound so snobby...)
(LA)
We came to this outdoor mall to grab dinner at Rock Sugar and ended up shopping after Happy Hour (usually a very bad combo =X). It's a Westfield mall, so not many surprises there, but this was a nice outdoor space with lots of stores. Michelle and I even stopped by my first Martin + Osa, where I bought the cardigans that
posted about on sale. Zara and H and M are also good here. What I thought was the most interesting were the parking lots. They have exact counts of how many spaces are left on each side of the structure and they have red/green lights that hang over spaces so you can spot free spaces from a distance. So high tech!
For fancier outdoor malls, I heard from friends that
beats them all (even Santana Row in San Jose).
(Costa Mesa)
This mall is amazing. It's huge and has two parts and it has all the luxury shops + the usual BR, Club Monaco etc! I think this is my favorite OC mall =)
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Thank you to everyone who showed me around SoCal -- especially Michelle, Shell and Alex in LA, Audrey, my brother Joe, Ray, Jonny and of course Jing for driving/planning/being great!