My phone has a note just called “Coast.” Been adding to it for years, ever since I got tired of retyping the same text every time a friend landed at LAX and asked where to go on their one free day. A lot of opinions have grown since then – which towns I’d actually send someone to, which ones I quietly steer people away from.
Most lists won’t tell you that part. They’ll hand you forty names in no particular order and let you sort it out. That’s not helping; that’s homework. LA doesn’t have too few good beach towns – it has too many, and the useful thing isn’t the list; it’s someone willing to say, “Skip that one, go here instead.”
So that’s what this is. Sorted by how long you’re willing to sit in the car, with my honest opinion attached to each stop – including the ones I think get more credit than they deserve.
| Drive Time | Towns | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Under 45 minutes | Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Palos Verdes | South Bay |
| About an hour | Malibu, Long Beach, Huntington Beach | North / South |
| About 90 minutes | Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point | South, Orange County |
| Two hours or more | Ventura, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria | North, up the coast |
Times without traffic are a theoretical concept in LA, more than a promise. Add 30–50% on a Friday afternoon.
Under 45 Minutes: You’re Basically Still in LA
These aren’t day trips. They’re what a normal Tuesday can look like if you leave the office by four. I’d argue this band is the most underrated of the four, honestly – everyone’s chasing the far-flung option when some of the best hours I’ve had on this coast were twenty minutes from home.
1. Santa Monica & Venice
I’m grouping these two on purpose, because almost everyone visiting LA ends up walking both in the same afternoon whether they planned to or not. Santa Monica is the tidier, more built-out version – the pier, the Third Street Promenade, a beach wide enough that it never quite feels crowded even when it is. Walk fifteen minutes south and Venice gets weirder and better: the boardwalk, the canals a few blocks inland that almost nobody visiting for the first time knows exist, and enough street performers to remind you that you’re still, technically, in California. The Third Street Promenade, if I’m being honest, you can skip entirely – it’s a mall with better weather, and I say that having spent plenty of afternoons there myself.
Skip the crowds: the Venice Canals, not the boardwalk, if you want ten quiet minutes.
2. Manhattan Beach
Manhattan Beach has called itself the Beach Volleyball Capital of the World since the sport more or less invented itself on this sand in the 1930s, and the Manhattan Beach Open, running since 1960, is still the closest thing the sport has to Wimbledon. Walk the pier, and you’ll pass the Volleyball
Walk of Fame, bronze plaques for past champions set right into the boards. It’s a quieter, more residential town than Santa Monica, and I like sending people here specifically when they say they want “the beach” without the boardwalk circus attached.
It’s less interesting to look at than Venice, I’ll admit that much, but a far more pleasant place to actually spend a morning – and that trade-off is one I’ll take every time now that I’m past the age of finding street performers charming.
Best for: a calm morning walk, not a big afternoon out.
3. Palos Verdes Peninsula
Palos Verdes is the one most first-time visitors never hear about, which is exactly its appeal. The peninsula out south of the South Bay with genuine cliffs, not gentle slopes, dropping straight to the water – jutsPoint Vicente Lighthouse and the tide pools at Abalone Cove are both worth the stop, and on a clear day I’d honestly rank the views here over Malibu’s – I know that’s a fighting opinion in this city, and I’ll defend it anyway.
One honest note: the famous glass-walled Wayfarers Chapel closed and was carefully dismantled in 2024 after the ground beneath it started shifting by as much as seven inches a week. The good news is it isn’t gone for good – it’s being rebuilt on stable ground nearby, right next to Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall, so it’s staying on the peninsula. But the rebuild is a multi-year process, so it’s not something to plan a visit around right now. Plan one around the cliffs instead – they’re not going anywhere.
Heads up: Wayfarers Chapel is closed and being rebuilt nearby on stable ground. Skip it off your itinerary for now and see the cliffs instead.
About an Hour: Worth Clearing an Afternoon
This band splits in two directions – Malibu is north up the coast, Long Beach and Huntington are south. Pick a direction; don’t try to do both. If you make me choose, I’ll take the southern run more often than not these days; the north has prettier scenery, the south has better food and less attitude about parking.
4. Malibu
Malibu gets treated like a single glamorous idea when it’s really twenty-one miles of coastline with wildly different personalities depending on where you stop. Zuma is the wide, family-friendly stretch. El Matador is the dramatic one with sea caves and rock formations, and it’s the one I actually send people to, even though the parking lot is small and fills up by mid-morning. I’ll say the unpopular part out loud: most of Malibu is a little overrated for what it costs to park there. El Matador is the exception that makes the whole detour worth it. The drive up the Pacific Coast Highway is most of the point either way – roll the windows down for that part.
Time it right: El Matador before 10am, or you’re parking on the highway shoulder.
Long Beach
Long Beach doesn’t get filed under “beach town” in most people’s heads, and that’s a mistake. It’s a genuine city with a waterfront, not a sleepy strip of sand, which makes it the pick when you want a real afternoon of things to do rather than just a beach chair. The aquarium is legitimately good, the Queen Mary sits permanently docked as a strange, photogenic piece of history, and I’ll say it plainly: the food scene here has quietly gotten better than half of what West LA gets credit for, at half the wait. For the rest of the city, start with the LA food experiences worth a first visit.
Best for: a full day, not a beach-only stop.
5. Huntington Beach
Huntington fought Santa Cruz over the legal right to call itself “Surf City USA” and won a formal trademark registration in 2006, two years after filing – which tells you everything about how seriously this town takes its identity. Ten miles of wide, flat sand, a pier built for long walks, and a surf culture that’s the real thing, not a marketing invention layered on top of a normal beach. It’s not the prettiest stop on this list, and I won’t pretend otherwise – but it’s the most honest one, and some days that matters more to me than a nice view.
Best for: watching people surf, or learning yourself – lessons are everywhere.
About 90 Minutes: A Real Day Trip, Straight Into Orange County
This is the point where “near LA” starts meaning something. Budget the whole day, and don’t try to hit all three in one trip – I’ve made that mistake so you don’t have to, and all it gets you is three rushed half-visits instead of one good one.
6. Newport Beach & Balboa Island
Newport is polished in a way that’s obvious the moment you park – this is old Orange County money, and the harbor shows it. Newport proper, I’ll admit, is a little stuffy for my taste, more about being seen than actually relaxing. Balboa Island, a short ferry ride across the bay, is the part I actually recommend, and honestly the only part I’d bother with if I only had an afternoon: tiny, walkable, lined with cottages, and home to the frozen banana on a stick that somehow became a whole regional tradition.
Don’t skip: the three-minute ferry to Balboa Island. It’s part of the experience, not just transportation.
7. Laguna Beach
If someone forces me to name one single best day trip from LA, it’s this one. Laguna has actual coves and cliffs instead of one long flat stretch of sand, an art-gallery-heavy downtown you can walk end to end, and water that runs a clearer turquoise than anywhere else this close to the city. It’s far enough to feel like you left, close enough to be home for a late dinner.
Best cove: Shaw’s Cove for the quietest water, Main Beach if you want the classic postcard version.
8. Dana Point
Dana Point earned a formal trademark registration in 2019, after filing in 2018, as the Dolphin and Whale Watching Capital of the World, and the claim actually holds up – underwater canyons close to shore pull in more dolphins per square mile than almost anywhere on the planet, plus year-round whale traffic. It’s been running whale-watching charters since 1971, longer than almost anywhere else in the country. If a boat trip is part of your idea of a good coastal day, this is the stop – and if it’s not, I’d be honest with you and send you to Laguna next door instead. On land, Dana Point doesn’t have much on its neighbors.
Book ahead: whale-watching tours fill up on weekends, especially in winter migration season.
Two Hours or More: Worth Waking Up Early For
North up the coast this time, not south. All three sit close together, so this is the one band where doing two in a day is realistic – and honestly, the one band on this whole list I’d tell you not to rush, even if that means cutting one of the three.
9. Ventura
Ventura is what most people drive through on the way to Santa Barbara without stopping, and that’s honestly the most overlooked mistake on this whole list. It’s also the actual departure point for Channel Islands National Park – the ferry out of Ventura Harbor is the only way most people reach the islands, with boats running daily and the closer islands about an hour out. Even without the ferry, the harbor and old downtown are worth an hour on their own.
Good to know: book the Channel Islands ferry ahead if that’s the plan – it’s not a walk-up.
10. Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara is the one on this list that genuinely feels like a different state, not just a further exit on the 101. Spanish colonial architecture, a courthouse worth climbing the tower of for the view alone, and a downtown built for wandering without a plan. Two hours each way makes it a full day, not a half-day add-on, so I only send people here when they’ve actually blocked the whole day for it. If you’d rather stay the night, Solvang is 45 minutes inland – it’s on our list of small towns near LA worth a weekend. It’s my pick for anyone visiting from out of state who wants one perfect coastal day to remember – Tammy still asks to go back at least once a year, and I’ve never once talked her out of it.
Don’t rush it: this is a full-day trip, not a stop on the way to somewhere else.
11. Carpinteria
Carpinteria sits just before Santa Barbara and gets a fraction of the traffic, which is the entire point of sending you here. It’s been marketed as the “World’s Safest Beach” since a California newspaper coined the phrase in the 1920s – the Channel Islands shelter it enough that the water stays genuinely calm, no big surf, no rip currents to worry about. It’s not a scientific claim, it’s a marketing one, but it happens to be true enough that it stuck for a hundred years.
The towns everyone’s heard of are usually good for a reason. The ones nobody mentions are sometimes good for a better one.
Best for: families with small kids, or anyone who wants Santa Barbara’s calm without Santa Barbara’s crowds.
Final Thoughts
Nobody paid to be on this list, and the order has nothing to do with who advertises with us – it’s genuinely just sorted by drive time, because that’s the actual decision most people are making when they ask me this question. Update the “coast” note on my phone often enough and eventually it turns into an article. This is that note.
If you’re building out a full LA trip, our 15 LA date night plans and Beverly Hills vs West Hollywood guide cover the parts of the city that aren’t on the water. For everywhere else we’ve covered, our travel section has the rest.
Cheers,
Elliot
Frequently Asked Questions
Beyond the LA area, California’s coast has plenty worth a longer trip – Carmel and Cambria up the Central Coast, Mendocino further north – but if you’re working from Los Angeles as your base, Santa Barbara and Carpinteria are the two that punch furthest above their drive time. Both feel like a different state, not just a different freeway exit.
For a coastal focus specifically, Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes cover the close-in options, Malibu and Long Beach cover the under-an-hour range, Laguna Beach and Dana Point cover Orange County, and Santa Barbara covers the longer drive north. Which one is “best” depends entirely on how much time you actually have that day.
Santa Monica, Venice, and Manhattan Beach are the closest, all under 45 minutes from downtown without traffic. Malibu, Long Beach, and Huntington Beach sit around the one-hour mark. Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Dana Point run closer to ninety minutes. Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, and Ventura are the two-hour-plus options, north up the coast instead of south through Orange County.
If I had to pick exactly one, Laguna Beach earns it – far enough to feel like an actual trip, close enough to be back in LA for a late dinner, with better beaches and a more walkable downtown than most people expect. Dana Point is the pick if you want a whale-watching boat involved, and Santa Barbara is the pick if you’re willing to wake up early and make a full day of it.
Carpinteria, just south of Santa Barbara, is the one I’d call genuinely nice rather than scenic-but-crowded – it’s been marketed as the “World’s Safest Beach” since the 1920s because of its gradual slope and sheltered position, and it has almost none of the tourist density of its more famous neighbor a few minutes up the road.
The coast is the easiest answer, because you don’t need a flight or a hotel to make it feel like a real trip – just a tank of gas and a direction. South through Orange County gets you Huntington, Newport, Laguna, and Dana Point. North up the Pacific Coast Highway gets you Malibu, Ventura, Carpinteria, and Santa Barbara. Both directions are a legitimate day away from LA, and neither requires planning more than a lunch reservation.
