My Grammy's House: Newport Beach California

Last week we took a 5 day trip to Newport Beach, California. We flew into Orange County Airport then drove about 10 miles to the Marriott Newport Coast Villas. It is a sprawling resort set on the side of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Photo taken from Marriott Website

Our 2 bedroom 2 bath villa overlooked the golf course and the ocean. We had a fully equipped kitchen and lovely balcony. There were 3 pools on the property. All the comforts of home but a much better view. The weather was warm for them - in the eighties during the day and 70's at night. Perfect for us to get away from the Texas heat.

We ate well at a variety of restaurants. Two of our favorites were The Chart House and The Rusty Pelican - next to each other on the inland waterway. We had some fabulous fish and seafood. There were beautiful yachts to drool over while eating on the patios. But the best were the "wedding cruises". We saw a number of them - on very large 3 and 4 level boats. All parties seemed to be having a great time.

Another favorite was an old English pub and restaurant in town. We ate in the smaller part which reminded us of our trip to England in 1991.

Our last night we found a restaurant called Gulfstream. That was our best fish and seafood meal of the week.

The highlight of our trip was the day we took a whale watching cruise in Dana Point. The whole area was beautiful and one of my favorites of the trip. But the whale watching cruise was the icing on the cake. We saw close to a dozen blue whales, which are the biggest. They came as close as 50 feet from our catamaran which was a little intimidating because of their size. And countless dolphin putting on a show right next to the boat. The one thing I really wanted to see was a sea lion and I wasn't disappointed.

Just a few miles from the resort we stumbled upon Balboa Island - full of little streets, a few shops and lots of tiny (but million dollar) bungalows.

Of course no trip with Rich is complete without finding old cars and this one was no exception!

Real estate in California is quite pricey. One day we sat at one of the pools looking across at huge houses on top of a cliff. Technology nerd that I am I broke out Zillow on my iPhone and looked up the prices of the houses we were looking at. The one below is on the market for $18 million but there was one for $35 million that we couldn't see.