The Pierside Santa Monica

Worth getting out of bed for

Let your coastal Californian setting be the inspiration for days spent outdoors, getting in tune with SoCal’s love affair with wellness. The Pierside has bikes you can borrow, and there’s a cycle route on your doorstep: the Marvin Braude Bike Trail, aka the Strand, is a 22-mile cycle path, with coastal scenery as a constant, stretching from Torrance Beach in South Bay to Will Rogers State Beach in the Pacific Palisades area. The simplest of workouts in the Californian sunshine awaits at the Santa Monica Stairs – where you can feel the burn and raise your heart rate by ascending and descending a choice of wooden or concrete steps for the sweaty hell of it. Santa Monica has its own Muscle Beach (not to be confused with the iconic park of the same name at Venice Beach) – an outdoor gym of parallel bars, hoops, swings and ropes that offers spectator sport even if your pull-ups aren’t up to a public outing… South of the pier, Venice Beach resort has entertainment on land and sea – not only prized for its surf breaks (you can rent surfboards from the hotel’s Boardshop) but also for its boardwalk (with people-watching at its surreal finest) and outdoor basketball courts, where Lakers-inspired locals shoot hoops with aplomb. Venice is also home to Abbot Kinney Boulevard – a decadent cluster of shops and cafés that hosts a flea market on Saturdays. Fêted road trips await on the Pacific Coast Highway: while you’re in the ’hood, it’d be rude not to rent some wheels (soft-top preferable) and savour the 30-minute drive following the iconic coastline westwards to Malibu, where you can have a nosey around the artefacts littering the (sumptuously landscaped) Getty Villa and catch some rays on Surfrider Beach.  

Local restaurants

Tuck into elevated Italian at Elephante: with palm-framed, above-the-bay ocean views, this indoor-outdoor lounge-restaurant is a breeze-kissed spot for pizza, pasta, and a line-up of cocktails that spans shaken, stirred and mock. Seafood lovers jostle for a limited number of outdoor tables at Crudo e Nudo, a wine shop turned sustainable seafood restaurant, where a choice of raw-fish plates and oysters sits in contrast to cooked dishes such as steamed clams, and whole-fried lobster. Cobi's is easy to spot, thanks to its pink exterior and green-framed windows, or just follow the aroma of  Southeast Asian dishes including curry puffs, pork dumplings⁠, and butter chicken, served on a mishmash of prettily patterned Delft. 

Local cafés

Your nearest outpost of Blue Bottle Coffee, known for its sustainable brews and devotion to coffee craft, is on Main Street, in the Edgemar Center for the Arts – a light-filled, plant-dotted space for a caffeine fix. Open all day, all week, Goodboybob is an ivy-covered café with high tables and stools on an alfresco terrace where you can quench your midday thirst with everything from drip coffee to fresh juices – add a ‘matcha mama’ chia pudding to your order while you’re at it. 

Local bars

A popular, two-storey restaurant, 1212 Santa Monica really comes alive at night. Beyond its dining credentials, it has an innovative cocktail list (try an emerald Gin Basil Smash or a Ginger Fizz with cucumber vodka), and on Fridays and Saturdays it transforms into a club with sets from some of LA’s top DJs. WIth the intimate, unfussy appeal of a dive bar, Chez Jay is a half-block south of the pier and operates a no-photos policy that’s been in place since Marilyn and JFK visited in the 60s: head here on Fridays and Saturdays when doors stay open until 2am.