Hi all, hope you are all having a great week! I spent some time last week in Orange County, California. A few girls and I went out to visit our friend Jenna, who I grew up with and have known for 30+ years, which is crazy! Here is a recap of our trip, with some recommendations of places we really liked to eat and visit in the area!
We arrived in Newport Beach on Thursday morning and went straight to lunch at the Beachcomber Cafe. It is a casual little beachfront spot—the food was good and you could not beat the view!
Jenna lives in Newport Beach and her house was our home base. They recently renovated their house and I’ll share a few pictures below because I loved it!
We did lots of hanging out by the pool…
And of course, with drinks in hand!
We spent some time in Lido Marina Village in Newport Beach and I’d definitely recommend this spot for shopping. It could not have been cuter and had a great lineup of stores.
We stayed for dinner at Lido Marina and ate at Zinqué. The food was great and I’d definitely recommend this spot!
We shared a bunch of yummy dishes…
The next morning we went for a big walk around Balboa Island. There are lots of houses in row after row along the water, and you can get in a few miles of walking and taking in the scenery.
We grabbed juices after from Juice Crafters, which were delicious.
We hit up Laguna Beach after that for a big lunch and some shopping. We ate at Nick’s and it was one of my favorite meals of the trip! Pictured below are not the healthiest things on the menu but we’d had a lot of wine the night before 🙂
For dinner that evening we stuck around Laguna beach. We had sunset drinks at the Rooftop at Laguna. This is an awesome spot with uninterrupted views straight onto the ocean. A definitely must-see in Laguna Beach.
We ate dinner at Driftwood Kitchen. It was really cute and right on the beach. The food wasn’t the absolute best I had all weekend. This after dinner-wine, however, was definitely something to write home about!
Saturday morning we got up and took the ferry over to Catalina Island. You can access the ferry to Catalina from many places from LA down to the OC. Catalina just is gorgeous and definitely a day trip worth doing!
While in Catalina we ate at Bluewater Avalon, which was definitely one of the best options on the island.
One of the most fun things we did on Catalina was rented a golf cart and ride it all over the island exploring all the mountain roads. This is a must! The views are killer and there is lots to see including wildlife – we saw lots of deer and even seals!
I absolutely adore just about every trip I take to California and these few days in the OC were definitely ones I’ll remember for a long time. Girls trips are the best!
Hope you all have a great rest of your week!
Cheers!
xx—BB
These are great recommendations! I read your blog all the time and my boyfriend used your recs in Napa recently, they were wonderful! I’ll bookmark this for our next trip out to Southern California!
Glad you liked the post, and the Napa recs, too! Cheers!
Bree! This is a great trip lineup. I was thinking about doing San Diego next spring but may switch and copy this itinerary instead. Beautiful pictures!
That’s a hard call as San Diego is great, too! We are headed there in a few months ourselves. I think either way you can’t go wrong!
I’m still jealous! My parents are there now visiting my mom’s high school friends. They aren’t staying on Lido this time, but Little Balboa. Can’t believe they didn’t take me!!
I can’t believe they didn’t take you either – you should have inserted yourself into that vacation! 🤣