Abbot Kinney and the Venice canals

Three versions of Venice, within a mile of each other

Abbot Kinney Boulevard runs inland from the beach and is the walkable part of Venice: independent shops, design and furniture stores, coffee bars and restaurants along a stretch you can cover on foot in an afternoon. It is the part of the neighborhood that behaves like a normal shopping street, and it is expensive.

A few blocks away, the canals are the surprise. They are residential water lanes lined with houses, crossed by small arched footbridges, and quiet in a way that almost nothing else near the beach in this city manages. You walk the paths along the water. It takes half an hour to loop, there is nothing to buy, and it is the best free thing in the neighborhood.

The boardwalk is the third Venice and the one on the postcards. Street performers, vendors, the skate park, the outdoor gym on the sand. It is loud and crowded, parts of it are rough, and it is genuinely worth seeing once. Go in daylight and know what you are walking into rather than being surprised by it.

Park once, because you will not find a second space

Parking is the constraint on all three. There are beach lots that charge by the day, and street parking on the residential blocks is largely permit-only with signage that is enforced. Read the sign at the space, including the street cleaning day, before you walk away. Getting towed in Venice is common enough that residents plan their week around it.

So the working version of a Venice afternoon is to park once, near the beach or at the far end of Abbot Kinney, and do the rest on foot. The canals to the boardwalk to Abbot Kinney is an easy walk in flat shoes. Driving between them will eat the afternoon.

Timing separates them. Abbot Kinney is a late-morning-to-evening street and most of the interesting shops do not open early. The canals are best early, when the light is low and the residents have not yet had a hundred people walk past the kitchen window. The boardwalk peaks on warm weekend afternoons, which is when it is at its most entertaining and its least pleasant.

If you are staying in Venice or Marina del Rey, ask your local manager about parking at the house specifically: whether it comes with a permit, how many cars fit, and where guests are meant to leave a second vehicle. On these blocks the answer changes street by street.