Beach Biking in California

My last flight of the month before my reserve started was to LAX. I’ve actually visited Los Angeles twice before, and have done most of the “touristy” stuff, including visiting the Walk of Fame, Santa Monica, the Hollywood Sign, Beverly Hills and such. So this time a few of us decided to do something a little different and stay closer to the area that our crew hotel is in, rather than heading to the city.

As usual when I’m in the States, I woke up early (more like in the middle of the night really, around 3am!) and tossed and turned in bed trying to get back to sleep, but gave up by 6am and got ready for breakfast instead. At breakfast I met up with a couple of the other crew, and one of the girls suggested we head down to Huntington Beach, have a stroll around and hire some bikes. So that was exactly what we did!

Unfortunately I seemed to have brought the bad weather with me from Milan, and instead of it being sunny California weather that I was expecting, it was grey and dreary! Looks like I packed the wrong clothes as well, as I only brought things for sunny weather…oops!

It was also super windy, and we strolled through the town stopping to look at some of the pretty boutiques and cafes, and then along the pier. There were some brave surfers out despite the cold temperatures, and we did not envy them in the water!

After fuelling ourselves up with some coffee, the four of us strolled along the beachfront to find somewhere to hire a bike. We stumbled across this amazing mural along the way, and couldn’t help but stop to take pictures!

There are lots of small shops renting out bikes, and they all seem to charge the same prices, so we picked the first one we saw, which happened to have pink bikes for us girls! You could rent by the hour or for the day, which we did, for $30 per bike.

We decided to cycle down to Newport Beach, which is approximately 10km. It’s a fairly easy ride, as there is a cycle path the whole way and it’s pretty flat.

The only slight issue we had was a strong headwind, but it wasn’t a big problem, and we slowly made our way towards Newport Beach. Along the way it started to rain, but luckily I had a scarf in my handbag which I managed to tie around my hair, haha!

Eventually we made it to Newport Beach, locked up the bikes and found a spot to stop for lunch.

We chose a place called Rockin Baja, which our First Officer Eric had been to before, and I can see why he wanted to go back! We had the most amazing $5 house margaritas, and I tried a selection of shrimp, steak and lobster tacos which were absolutely incredible. Highly recommend if you’re after some Mexican food in Newport Beach.

Before we knew it it was time to start making a move back to the bikes…and the sun had finally made an appearance!

We popped down to the beach to finally get a bit of sand between our toes, and wandered down towards the pier.

The sea was absolutely freezing, I can’t imagine how the surfers were in there! It started to drizzle again as we hopped back on the bikes and started to cycle back towards Huntington Beach.

It’s around 10 km each way, and with just one or two stops took us around 45 minutes each way. The four of us were chatting the whole way so perhaps that was why we weren’t particularly speedy!

Before long we were back at the bike shop, and luckily we arrived a little earlier as they were shutting up shop for the day due to the strong winds and rain. Soon the jet-lag and 11 hour time difference started to hit us and after a quick stroll back through the pretty streets, we made our way back to the hotel for some rest.

A great day out, with some excellent margaritas and tacos, and even a bit of exercise!

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