24 Hours in Santa Monica, California

I’m going to preface this post with saying… Yes. I am a loyalty points snob. Ok, now that I got that out of the way…..

A few weeks ago, I was evaluating my 2021 loyalty points achievements and realized I was only about 5,000 miles away from earning the next status with American Airlines, and I needed to earn the points before the end of January. I was SO close! I talked it over with Dono and we decided that I’d take a quick weekend trip to earn the points. He had suggested flying to Miami and back in a day for a quick “mileage run,” but spending all day in an airport/airplane just did not sound appealing to me. If I was going to spend money to go somewhere, I wanted to at least try to enjoy the trip.

I did some research on locations that would earn me the 5,000 miles and boiled it down to Miami, New York City, and Los Angeles. From a COVID perspective, none of them were great options, but knowing I would only be there for a short time and would likely not interact with many people, it seemed like it could work. Plus – with the big cities I wouldn’t need to rent a car, and I could probably burn some hotel points and stay for free, making the trip even more affordable (and thus justifiable!).

At the time of my research, Miami was slated to get rain that weekend, and New York was getting a snow storm. No thanks. I decided to book to Los Angeles! In efforts to not further impact my day job, I opted to fly out Friday evening after work and return Saturday evening. I told you… quick trip!

In order to get the 5,000 points, I booked a first class ticket, and was lucky enough to get a spot on an American Airlines 787 Dreamliner with lay flat seats! Throughout the flight, I was able to stretch out a bit and enjoy watching Dear Evan Hansen and some 30 Rock, while I relaxed a bit with some wine. Before I knew it, we had landed at LAX.

Once landed, I picked up an Uber and headed to my hotel in Santa Monica – about a 20 minute drive from the airport. I ended up choosing Oceana, an LXR hotel a part of the Hilton brands. This hotel was absolutely gorgeous and in a prime location! It was far enough away from the Santa Monica Pier that I felt safe, but also literal steps away from the beach and walking distance to restaurants and shopping – perfecto!

Because my body clock was 2 hours a head, and it was already after 10pm, I hopped into bed pretty quickly, but then woke up pretty early due to the time difference. One fun thing about traveling to pacific time zones is that I don’t have any problem waking up early!

I walked outside right as the sun was coming up, so I got to see some pretty colors along the beach. I was pretty amazed at how few people were out and about (at 6:30am lol!) so I felt like I had the world to myself for awhile!

I walked about a mile or so, just past the Santa Monica pier to Cora’s Coffee Shoppe. It was a cute little place right off Ocean Avenue. I had read reviews online that the restaurant was typically pretty busy, so I was thrilled to show up and see that I was the first one there!

I ordered the Orange Juice Blueberry Pancakes, and they were absolutely delicious! Of course, I inhaled them before I could get a picture. I also had a side of bacon, freshly squeezed orange juice, and a coffee. I was a bit hungry after all the morning walking!

Following breakfast, I headed down towards the beach to walk along the ocean front walk.

Initially I had plans to walk back to the hotel, borrow a bicycle (which you could rent for free!), and bike down the trail towards Venice Beach, but I was SO full from breakfast that I just decided to take my leisure time walking back.

I walked along the beach for awhile and stopped near the Pier. It was still rather early (like 7:30am! ha!) so there weren’t a ton of people around, and it was still nice to enjoy the beach to myself. I walked up and down the pier, taking in all the sights, and then found a spot in the sand to sit for awhile.

It was such a gorgeous day, and the weather was perfect – I could have sat there all day, assuming I had some sunscreen! I worked a little bit on my phone and enjoyed the people watching as people started waking up and exercising along the beach.

After about an hour of hanging on the beach, I decided to get some reprieve from the sun and do a little shopping. I headed towards the Third Street Promenade and walked up and down the street looking in the shops. With the SuperBowl coming to LA soon, there were quite a few street vendors, and that was fun to watch.

I then headed back to the hotel so I could rest a little bit before heading back to the airport. Instead of staying in my room, I opted to sit in the shade by the pool, however, quickly enough the sun was overhead!

Californians really are lucky with their weather! It was crazy for me to think that at home it was in the 30s, but I was rolling up my pant legs and sitting in the sun…in January!

After getting a bit of sun and a quick snooze, I headed back to my room to get ready to head back to the airport. I forgot to mention, my room was DIRECTLY on Ocean Avenue, so it was kind of fun to do people watching through the window. Thank goodness for curtains though 🙂

About Noon I headed back to LAX via Uber and headed home in another 787 Dreamliner with lay flat seats!

Overall – for such a quick trip, it was a good one! I told Dono that we needed to normalize a weekend “off” to do things like this either by ourselves or together. It was truly relaxing to have a morning to myself, get some sun and exercise in a new place. And since I had used hotel points and didn’t rent a car, the trip wasn’t expensive at all – just paid for my airline ticket! I will definitely be doing this again sometime soon!