

On a beautiful day, maybe even longer and plan to have some lunch there. We would definitely recommend at least two hours for the Pier and surrounding area. It depends on your mood and how much you enjoy people-watching. Visiting the Santa Monica Pier can be a half day or whole day activity. If you’re in LA and wanting to capture to beautiful views and sights you can see, check out our buddy Christina’s ideas about the most Instagramable spots in LA via Happy to Wander. That way you’ll get the good light, the surf, the amusement park, end in general it’s just beautiful. Photo Tip 2 : If you want pictures of the entire pier in the morning, do it from the beach on the south side of the pier. Walk up the steps and snap your pictures in the afternoon and evening light. Photo Tip 1 : One of the best places to get an actual picture of the Santa Monica Pier including Pacific Park is from the very end of the pier at the top the harbor operations building. It’s all so cool though and when you’re there you don’t even think about the fact that it’s been mostly replaced. Year after year with storms and construction projects and life in general, pieces of the pier have either been completely removed and replaced or improved so the initial vintage Pier from the last century is kind of just a ghost.

And it’s funny, but not much of the pier that you walk on today is the original 1909 pier. Over the years countless movies, television shows, and music videos haven’t been shot at the Santa Monica Pier so even if you’ve never been there before it feels like you’ve been a thousand times. There used to be a different ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier as well, but that’s since been replaced by the current one which has been around for 20 years. Initially the Santa Monica Pier had an old wooden roller coaster but that has since been dismantled and a newer metal roller coaster is in its place. Over the years the pier built by the city of Santa Monica and the secondary pier, also known as the Pleasure Pier, we’re joined to create the iconic Pier that we enjoy today. Santa Monica Pier was built in 1909 and initially was two separate structures. Here you’ll find both paid parking lots (attended and not) as well as, dare I say it, STREET PARKING! After 6pm street parking is actually awesome and pretty easy (except on Fridays). If you cannot score a spot in one of the beachfront parking lots, head a block over to Ocean Blvd. The obvious choice is north, but better luck is south. Tip: the best parking is found south of the Santa Monica Pier. You can have a nice walk and usually awesome success with parking. If you aren’t lugging a bunch of stuff make a right onto ocean and head north a bit and park at the bluff. The best places to park for a day at this awesome Southern California attraction are either in one of the five parking lots just off the beach. Sure, there is limited parking at the Santa Monica Pier itself, but depending on the weather and the day of the week you might be really hard pressed. Once you hit Ocean Boulevard or know that you’re within a block of it you need to find your parking right away. Seriously.īasically when you’re in Los Angeles you just need to head west on any of the large boulevards and they will get you there. Or you can drive on the 10 the entire way and then hit the beach. Or you can drive all the way down Pico Boulevard and you hit the beach.

It’s impossible to miss the Santa Monica Pier because you just drive all the way down Santa Monica Boulevard and then you hit the beach. The Pacific Coast Highway is a fantastic California road trip route. The Santa Monica Pier is also directly next to the Pacific Coast Highway, also known as the PCH. As you walk out onto the pier you see the sign that calls it out. The Santa Monica Pier is the very end of Route 66 (check out the Planet D for their Route 66 trip). When you ponder life in the West and the history of North America there are few things that pop out: the California Gold Rush, old west towns and cowboys, and then Route 66 and all of the struggles and stories in vintage history that are a part of it.
