Looking for a sunny Pacific Ocean arts paradise with white sand beaches within 20 miles of Anaheim and Disneyland? Laguna Beach, 50 miles south of Los Angeles and 75 miles north of San Diego, is the perfect spot for your next money-saving vacation rental. Downtown beachfront cliffs bloom with red and yellow flowers overlooking rocky tide pools, surfers, sailboats, and beach volleyball. Plus there are art galleries, boutiques, theaters, golf, hiking, fishing, scuba diving, a summer-long arts festival, and more. So skip the expensive beach community hotels and get near the water with a money-saving Laguna Beach vacation rental villa, home, townhouse, condo, or apartment.

Save on rental car fees and driving expenses with your Laguna Beach vacation rental within walking distance of downtown. Sidestep parking lot fees, parking meter tickets, and traffic congestion. Forget about dings and dents. Give your family’s tired feet a rest, too. Hop on Laguna’s free summer open-air trolleys connecting downtown, Pacific Coast Highway, Laguna Canyon Road, and the summer arts festivals. Explore nearby Newport Beach, Irvine, San Juan Capistrano, and San Clemente, perhaps by car. Perhaps also park and ride an Amtrak or Metrolink train linking San Diego, Los Angeles, and many cities in between and beyond.

Visit the Laguna Art Museum, on an ocean bluff site where an artists’ colony spearheaded the original arts festival following the 1932 Los Angeles summer Olympics. Summertime don’t miss the Festival of Arts and the Sawdust Art & Craft Festival. Shop ‘til you drop for jewelry, paintings, glass, clothing, sculpture, and other arts and crafts. Enroll in a weekend art class or workshop. Score tickets for the Pageant of the Masters, a theatrical production where locals dress in period costumes behind frames and become living images of art masterpieces.

Dozens of golf courses are within a few miles. Hike wooded canyons, mountain bike bluffs, horseback ride, scuba dive, skin dive, fish, and jog along 3 miles of coastline at Crystal Cove State Park. Hike 40 miles of trails at Laguna Coast Wilderness Park traversing rocky ridges, oak and sycamore woodlands, and some of southern California’s last undeveloped coastal canyons.

Motor south on Pacific Coast Highway to the rocky, chaparral-covered foothills of Aliso Beach Park. Take the kids to the “tot lot,” explore tidepools, paddle board, and build sand castles. Dana Point to the south was made famous by author Richard Henry Dana’s description of throwing cattle hides off cliffs to trading ships below. Head 3 miles inland to Mission San Juan Capistrano, near the Amtrak station. Further south is San Clemente, where President Nixon had his Western White House.