Getting the flavor of … Prime’ California coast for less

Prime’ California coast for less

Though best known as home to the coastal elite, Newport Beach “can fit into any budget,” said Christopher Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times. That is, if you can “make peace” with rows of gleaming RVs. Situated in a “prime location” just off California’s Pacific Coast Highway, the Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort & Marina is immediately noticeable for its 382 RV berths for travelers-on-the-go. But it also offers 24 ­cottages, starting at $99 a night throughout the summer, and convenient on-site amenities that make the entire complex a “find for a family.” These include the resort’s own marina, a beachfront promenade, and, “best of all, its own little lagoon with tiny bay waves lapping at its own crescent of sand.” Families can rent golf carts, Segways, or bicycles at the general store, then set off to discover the nearby wonders of Southern California’s coastline: sandpipers that weigh less than an ounce, brown pelicans incubating eggs with their webbed feet, and bottlenose dolphins frolicking in the Pacific’s warm waters.

Contact: Newportdunes.com

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George Washington, architect

Besides building a nation, George Washington also built “one of its most beautiful houses,” said Blair Kamin and Barbara Mahany in the Chicago Tribune. Located on a “gorgeously sited estate overlooking the Potomac River,” Washington’s beloved home, Mount Vernon, was designed by the man himself. A museum and visitors’ center, opened just last year, makes clear that America’s first president was not only a brilliant general but a “self-taught gentleman architect.” Though the iconic home’s exterior looks like cut stone, it’s actually made of pine boards, which Washington had painted white to create a rough texture like those of the villas designed by 16th-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio. A “graceful portico” with Tuscan columns, which Washington called the “piazza,” gives the estate a second riverside front. “Delicate, curving arcades” connect nearby buildings and “tease” the eye toward “striking views” of the Potomac and Maryland shoreline, fulfilling Washington’s idea of a landscape that “balanced the formal with the naturalistic.”

Contact: Mountvernon.org