Main Beach, Laguna Beach, California

Thanks to MTV’s hit reality TV series, everyone’s now familiar with Laguna Beach.  The titles credits sequence mixes up shots of the beautiful cast, pricey real estate, and some tantilising glimpses of Laguna’s wonderful scenery, with steep hills dropping to the gorgeous coastline.  The  expensive lifestyle may be out of reach, but thankfully  the best things in life are free - the superb beaches. 

Overall Laguna has over 7 miles of breathtakingly dramatic coastline.  Right in the middle, at nearly a mile and a half long, is Laguna Main Beach.   There’s no allocated parking lot (wake up town planners!) but it’s not too difficult to find somewhere to park close-by (but nearly everywhere is metered).  If you’re on vacation, a good idea is to pick a beach front hotel, so as to totally avoid the parking problems.  (Laguna Beach is one of the few towns in SoCal where you can find great beach-side hotels).

Main Beach offers the usual facilities, ie restrooms, showers and picnic areas.  The beach is well patrolled by lifeguards – their headquarters is the quaint white tower at the back of the beach constructed in 1929 – yes, things were nearly as busy then.  The lifeguards are sometimes called to action – the ocean waves can be big and powerful, occasionally catching a poor swimmer off-guard.  But it’s great for all types of boarding – skim-boarding, body-boarding and surfing.  The local skim-boarders claim the sport was invented at nearby Aliso beach, but I get the feeling that hundreds of kids all over the world would strongly disagree.

A wide wooden boardwalk runs behind the beach.  If you have slight voyeuristic tendencies (as I suppose we all have), this is a great place to people-watch as there’s an eclectic variety of interesting people about.  On a balmy summer evening street perfomers set up shop either side, often making for great entertainment.

Best Beach’s rating : Wilderness feel 0 stars out of 5, Warm water 2 out of 5, Facilities 4 out of 5. Happy times 4 stars out of 5.

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