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| A stunning ocean view from one of Pelican Hill's two golf courses. |
I just returned from a few weeks of absolute bliss touring the Southern California coast, from North San Diego County to Santa Monica. Today I want to tell you about my stay on the California Riviera, the stretch of Orange County coastline that encompasses the communities of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point and tinier towns in between. It wasn’t foreign territory to me. I’ve spent many summers on Newport’s famed beaches, especially at The Wedge—the world famous body surfing/body boarding beach at the end of the Balboa peninsula that creates Newport’s harbor. And thanks to friends with boats, I’ve spent countless hours touring that harbor—with 9,000 boats one of the biggest on the West Coast—sipping cocktails and oogling the yachts and luxury homes that line its channels. During this visit, I decided to go for a big picture look at the area, and traveled up into the hills overlooking the ocean for a stay at Pelican Hill.
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| The resort's Coliseum Pool. |
My colleague Sarah Elbert just wrote about her sojourn in Tuscany and despite the fact that I was in California, I also got a taste of Italy. Pelican Hill was designed in homage to the great Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio and built to resemble a seaside palazzo. In addition to the spacious hotel rooms, the resort also offers private villas and bungalows for privacy-seeking celebrities, families or guests who desire longer stays.
Pelican Hill is a self-contained paradise. There are two Tom Fazio-designed championship golf courses that are considered among the best in the state. The round Coliseum Pool is something out of Roman legend: the 136-foot diameter gleaming blue orb lined with a million (!) hand cut and laid glass tiles is one of the largest in the world. It offers amazing ocean vistas, as well as private cabanas that can even be used to stage an intimate dinner. The spa is exquisite, with its own line of natural lotions and potions, plus a signature line of organic nail polishes as well. There’s an entire camp for kids on the premises, a sports bar for the guys, a wedding arbor and honeymoon cottage, event/meeting rooms, and acres of beautiful gardens and sitting space to take in views of Newport Harbor, Catalina Island or just miles of deep blue sea. Pelican Hill couldn’t be designed more beautifully.
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| Terrace view at Andrea. |
If you want to go to the beach, whale watch, kayak or experience any of the other countless water activities available in Newport (plus endless shopping activities at nearby Fashion Island), the resort will take care of that as well. Pelican Hill is packed with amenities.
The culinary offerings include a cooking school and five restaurants. Want a morning latte or an afternoon gelato? Both are made fresh in the Caffé espresso bar. No less than a dozen kinds of fresh pasta are made by hand each day to serve in the resort’s signature Northern Italian restaurant, Andrea. I had the bucatini, and it was simply brilliant.
It would have been so easy to sink into these sumptuous surroundings for the rest of the summer, but other destinations awaited. More on those in my next blog.
Photos courtesy of Pelican Hill