Newport Beach
borders Huntington
to the north and
has pretty much the same characteristics. Newport and Huntington are
actually just separated by the
Santa Ana
River which is so small you could walk across it without getting your
chest
wet. Newport's
parking is much
different than Huntington's. There
is
no real parking lot you have to pay to enter, there are meters along 
the road that
runs parallel to the beach; more often than
not you should be able to find a
non-metered parking
space for free. The
walk is all of 10 yards
and
the walk from the edge of the sand to the water is
at most 100 yards. There
are also no
fire pits at Newport, unlike Huntington. However, if you go a distance
past the pier, onto the Balboa
Peninsula there are some bonfire pits
scrunched together. Newport
Beach is, in my opinion, the best shortboard surfing sport in Orange
County, but there are
only certain streets that allow surfing.
The
limited parking can
sometimes be hassle
but it also means there are a limited number of
people. Bring
sandals because the sand
can get extremely hot in the middle of the day during the summer.
Newport is the perfect
beach for an entire
day, yet it is also the perfect half-day visit to the beach before a
night
out. At one end of
the beach
is the Newport Beach Pier 
with
tons of restaurants and many small shops that rent out beach gear. If
you keep heading
south, you
will walk to
Balboa Penninsula and the Harbor. Balboa is very similar to downtown
Laguna Beach and has
numerous
restaurants
and boutiques. If
you take the ferry
across the harbor you can reach the island, which is also home to
another
beautiful beach that looks much like Newport.