Newport Beach and Harbor Cruise

I bought a Spreebird deal for $21 to do a harbor cruise, pizza and a ferris wheel rides for two at Newport Beach.  My car was in the shop at the only time we could use this voucher, so we borrowed my in laws mini van which was more roomy for the long drive than our Civic.  We left our in laws much later than anticipated and was hoping to make it to our tour on time.  Well, we were a couple minutes late and the boat was about to leave.  The employee at Fun Zone Boats was nice enough to suggest coming back an hour later when we might have a chance to see sea lions.  I said great!  Meanwhile, we went to the pizza place to get our big slices of cheese pizza.  The youngest didn't want pizza; so we brought a lunch from home for her.  After eating lunch, we went to use our Ferris Wheel vouchers.  My 8 year old and I went together.  Hubby and my 4 year old didn't want to go and my daughter discovered she does not like ferris wheels.  We were on there for a good while that we had to tell them to take us off since our boat tour was about to start.  We chose to sit on the top part, outside of the boat to get a nice view of the harbor.  We saw several sea lions on the tour.  Apparently, we were the 1st tour to see them in a while.  The girls loved spotting the sea lions and could care less of what famous person lived in the huge houses.

After our harbor cruise, we went to Corona Del Mar State Beach which was about 10 min. away.  We had to climb our way up some rocky paths to make our way down the other side where the cove was.  We made it down and discovered the cove was not as big as I expected.  We found a shady spot in the cove to set up.  The water is very very calm.  The girls were able to play in the water without waves knocking them down or taking them further in the water.  There was also a nice sand area for them to play and lots of shells and little crabs found in the rocks nearby.  This is a great beach for families an small kids.