Newport Beach is one of southern California's wealthiest beach cities, set around a vast natural harbour that holds the largest concentration of pleasure craft on the west coast. The mix is a particular Orange County one: a long sandy peninsula with old beach cottages and bungalows, an inland district of luxury malls and corporate offices, and a string of artificial islands in the harbour itself with some of the most expensive real estate in California.
The most pleasant part of town is the Balboa Peninsula, a long narrow strip of sand that separates the harbour from the open Pacific. Walk the boardwalk between the Newport Pier and the Balboa Pier, hop the small ferry across to Balboa Island, and you have a half-day that captures the place. The 1906 Balboa Pavilion is the harbour's most recognisable landmark, and harbour cruises and Catalina Island ferries leave from beside it.
Inland, Fashion Island is the area's central upscale shopping mall and the Newport Beach Civic Center sits beside it, with its much-photographed white-rabbit sculpture installation. North of the harbour the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve protects one of the few remaining undeveloped estuaries on the southern California coast — superb for birding and easy cycling.
Newport is a working harbour as much as a resort: the marine industry, sport fishing, and competitive sailing are still real businesses here. The water is the focus and almost everything worth doing involves it, from kayaking the back bay to standing on the pier at dawn watching the dory fishermen sell their catch straight off the beach.