Bike Riding in Redondo Beach – From Dawn to Dusk
Join me for a picture tour of my day bike riding in Redondo beach. From the Portofino hotel early in the day, to sunset on the beach, this was a day full of adventure.
One of my absolute favorite things to do on a day off is spend time at the beach. That’s why, when one of my friends from North Carolina named Bill came to visit, we had a beach adventure!
Bill does business occasionally out on the west coast, and any time he’s here we meet up and have some sort of fun day and grab a bite to eat (as much as I love the beach, I’m sure I love all the restaurants out here even more!).
He was staying at a cute little place in Redondo Beach for work this time, so we met up there, and began our beach day that included an impromptu 17 mile bike ride down the beach. And…no…that is not a typo.
Let me preface this adventure with the fact that it has been probably over a year since my last time riding a bike. And before that? Gosh, I can’t even remember before that the last time I went. Childhood maybe? 😧😧😧
Bill was staying at the Portofino Hotel, which was really beautiful. One thing I’ll never get tired of seeing in California is the abundance of Palm trees. His hotel even had ones with little lights on them to welcome you in!
The hotel allows their guests to borrow bicycles and ride down the beach. When Bill told me that we immediately hopped on the bikes and began out adventure!
Well…he tried to start riding down to the beach, but I had allow my inner child to do about 20 laps around this pretty fountain! 😛
Bike Riding in Redondo Beach
We headed off to the beach down the bike lanes (having tried to ride a bike in LA traffic, this was such a pleasant and safe experience!), and before long we were at the beach. We started riding down the bike trail along the beach, and the view was gorgeous!
On one side, there were lots of homes (of all different styles!) and on the other side was the beach. It was such a gorgeous day!
We saw so many neat things as we were riding along! There were bonfire pits set up during the first bit of our jaunt, which is neat because not all the beaches in LA allow beach bonfires. I bet it would have been beautiful to see at night!
Then as we kept going we saw a place that was giving hang gliding lessons!! We almost stopped in, but were so motivated to keep riding. This part of the stretch isn’t actually in Redondo Beach, it’s further north in an area called Dockweiler State Beach.
By the end of our ride, we’d managed to go 17 and a half miles – that’s from Redondo Beach almost all the way up to Venice Beach and back!
We kept riding, and saw a real shipwreck! Well, maybe not a shipwreck, it is probably technically a boat wreck? It’s too small to be a ship.
Anyways, there was an area where a boat and Jet Ski were pulled up onto the beach after some sort of collision (or maybe a pirate attack!). It’s funny that we ended up seeing the jet ski, because I met Bill through jet skiing (he does competitive jet-ski racing).
I find it interesting how the world throws out little coincidences like that every now and then.
After being on bikes for so long, we stopped at a bench along the path for a little breather. I absolutely love people watching, so this part of the adventure might have been my favorite (well, except for the Thai Food, but more about that later).
We would see tons of people pass by, and the one that made me giggle was a lady who wanted to go on her bike ride, but also needed bring her little dog, so she popped him in her bike basket! I was trying to subtly take a cheeky IPhone picture of her, but I accidentally left my sound on!!! 😬😬
She heard the camera click, and started laughing so hard!!!! I got the picture right as she rode by. I guess I could never be a spy, I’m way too obvious!
I do think it’s a really cool picture though! 😛
At this point we’ve been biking for about an hour, and decided that we were getting pretty hungry. I was (and currently am still) craving Thai food. We were in at Hermosa Beach at this point.
So we left the beach, and biked up into the neighborhoods a little, because there was supposed to be a cute little Thai place nearby.
Sure enough after we biked up the biggest hill I’d ever seen (UGH), we arrived at Thai Top. It was such a cute little place, with friendly service, and a good view for people watching.
We got an appetizer of egg rolls, which was nice, but we were so hungry that I forgot to take a photo of it! Oops!
However, when my yellow curry arrived at the table, it was just too beautiful not to photograph!! It was delicious too. I love curry, and this one was especially nice. If I’m ever in the area again I’ll definitely stop by and eat here again!
After eating our yummy dinner, we went back out and biked back to The Portofino Hotel to return the bikes. As we got off the beach part of the bike path Bill pointed out a cute little pinwheel that marks the trail. It’s a little bike! So adorable.
It was just getting dark as we got back, and the sunset on the marina was beautiful. Bill made a little cameo into this photo too! It was the last photo I got to take before my my camera died.
I had such a lovely day riding bikes in Redondo Beach, and had such a fun time writing this article about it to share with you guys! Thanks for reading, and I’ll talk to you soon about my next adventure!
Admin Note: This post about bike riding in Redondo Beach first appeared on the blog in July of 2014. I have update the post with a few new photos and more description of the area.