In early May, Mikayla came to watch the boys at our house so I could join Shawn for a work trip in Long Beach, CA.
We both worked Thursday and Friday (and Shawn worked Saturday morning), but it still felt like we had a ton of free time together.
I landed on Thursday around dinner time, so of course we had to hit the beach for some food. I took an Uber from the airport to the hotel and then we hopped on Lime scooters to travel from the hotel to Belmont Pier for dinner at Belmont Brewing. Super cute outdoor dining spot with a great view.
On Friday, Shawn spent the day at the convention hall and I had breakfast at the hotel (avocado toast with tomatoes and eggs is my current fav!) and then worked outside in a courtyard in the shade for the day. Such a perfect spot to spend the day reviewing drawings. After work, we laced up our skates and headed south 15 miles on the boardwalk to Duke's in Huntington Beach for dinner! Initially we didn't think we'd go to HB, thinking we wanted to try all new places, but it is obviously such a special place for both of us that we ended up making it a 'new' experience by skating there :)
While there were a couple sketchy sections of the route (like along the highway with a small shoulder on a long bridge, and a couple steep bridges), most of the route was along the sand and was so beautiful. Other than my feet going a little numb from the bumpy roadways, I could have kept going once we hit our final destination. But, we gladly took off our skates and walked into Dukes for dinner and drinks on their patio.
I had to have their classic mai tai, they had live music with Polynesian dancers and we had a sunset view from our table. The GM also bought us a round of drinks after he found out we skated there from a couple cities away and that Shawn had worked there years ago :)
Before catching an (expensive) Uber home, we walked Main Street and 5th Street. Main Street is pretty much the same compared to our time living there, but 5th Street has completely transformed (we bought our first surfboards from the quiet 5th Street board shop back in '05). We grabbed a few goodies from HSS Surf Shop, peeked in the windows of our old apartment (creepy, I know), stopped at HB Beer Company and at the boho style Shore Break bar / restaurant.
On Saturday, after Shawn finished work, we took an Uber to Hermosa Beach. This was a new area for us. We ate at Tower 12 on Hermosa's Main Street and then walked along the boardwalk to Manhattan Beach. We're not usually ones to go for a walk on the boardwalk (typically bike or skate or run), but this let us avoid carrying anything with us and we had a hard time finding one way bike rentals. But, walking was perfect so we could look at all the beautiful beach homes (mansions) along the boardwalk! I would definitely do that again!
After our long walk on the boardwalk, we took an Uber to Dock Wyler beach (in an electric Mustang!) to a city bike rental station. From there, we biked (into the strong wind) to Santa Monica Pier. It was a nice route, but the wind and heavy city bikes made it more of a workout than a leisure ride along the sand. Once we (finally) made it to an open bike docking station in Santa Monica, we grabbed a beer to relax from our efforts at Venice Ale House - right on the edge of the busy Venice Beach area. With all that biking, we decided to take an electric scooter to get to our dinner spot (Blue Plate Tacos). After dinner and a walk along Third Street Promenade, we scootered south and then took an Uber back to our hotel for the night.
Sunday was our last day of our getaway. We carefully planned the weekend to squeeze as much out of it as we could. On this day, we planned to bike to a kayak rental and paddle one of the local harbor waterways. Unfortunately, since high winds were expected, they never opened the rental shop. Instead, we walked along the Belmont beach for a bit, spent some time sitting by the hotel pool, and had a perfect lunch in Long Beach at Solita Tacos & Margaritas before heading to the airport. To cap off the weekend, we paid the guest fee to have Shawn enter the Delta Sky Club Lounge with me and we ate and drank like royalty before flying home :)
Such a fun weekend in one of our favorite areas of the country.
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