Five Places to Breathe Deep Before/After Your Meeting

by Visit Ventura

With all due respect to your life’s work, life is about more than meetings. Ventura being Ventura, all of these sanity restorers are likely minutes from your meeting. A chance to contemplate what really matters. Check out this blog about how 15 minutes on the beach can help you feel uplifted.

“I love listening to the sound of the waves and the wind-like chime of the pebbles moving over the sand,” says our very own Marlyss Auster (VVCB President), who (wisely) starts so many days with a sunrise. “I love letting my mind drift through memories, and watching as the rising sun lights the sand, helping me with my beach treasure finds.”

Stroll to the end of the Pier

Inhale sky and sea. If it’s the end of the day, watch the sun slip behind hummocked Santa Cruz Island. If it’s the day’s beginning, watch the sun pull free from the Santa Monica Mountains. If you choose to watch a sunset (and your meeting is behind you), stay and watch night come, the lights of the pier throwing fingers across the water, the stars winking as if in on a secret.

Stand under the Pier

Everyone walks the upside of the Pier, but there’s real peace under the Pier, where you can hear water’s sighings. As the waves move toward shore, the sea rises up the mussel thickets wrapping the pilings. As the waves pass, water spills from the mussels in thousands of intricate waterfalls. It’s a form of breathing. Maybe evensong.

Watch the boats at Marina Park

At the harbor end of Pierpont Boulevard, you’ll find Marina Park. Park and walk along the path toward the mouth of Ventura Harbor. Watch the sailboats slide past. The wind-beaten pine says something of weathering things; like long meetings.

Take in a world-class panorama from Grant Park

Grant Park sits above Ventura (just above City Hall). Here you have nothing, and everything; the whisper of eucalyptus trees, and one of the finest seascape views in the world. Below you, toy town buildings. Beyond, the Pacific, broken by the rise of Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands. No place better for a sunset. Bring wine — and breath mints if it’s an evening meeting.

Walk any Beach, but try the beach across from Ventura Harbor.

Ventura has no shortage of beaches for ruminating, but if you want to get away from everything, wander the water’s edge along the beach across from Ventura Harbor. Folks do congregate around the parking lot at Surfer’s Knoll but walk south toward the Santa Clara Rivermouth and the world falls away.

But truly, any one of our beaches are magic.

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