Great pictures, but I personally found Avalon a bit...'off'. I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but I was hoping for something like Capri. Avalon is very, very far from that.
I am of course spoiled by the fact that I live on the coast already and recognize that there are vast differences between some of the coastal cities. Avalon, while quaint, is horribly overpriced. We didn't have a single great meal during the 4 days we stayed, and the hotel accomodations are lacking. Wow, that sounds really snobby. But honestly, as a vacation excursion, the island environment outside of town is much more interesting than Avalon itself.
I will say this, the Island Spa in Avalon was a beautiful, but expensive place to spend the day.
There were three totally fascinating things I gathered while there:
1. All of the trash on the island goes to a compacting facility on the south end and then taken on barges to the mainland to be (I assume) trucked to a landfill. So they haven't spoiled the island with landfill, which is wonderful.
2. The school sports teams in Avalon have very few home games and the kids have to cart their equipment and pay for the ferry to go to games. When we were on the ferry on the way out there in September 2019, the Avalon HS football team was on the boat with us, returning from a game. HS sports are expensive enough, can you imagine having to also pay the ferry rate to get to your game? It's not clear if there is a bus waiting on the Long Beach side?
3. Cars are not illegal to bring over, but there are limitations on the physical size of the cars themselves. Basically you cannot get much larger than a golf cart, but you also see Mini's, Smartcars, and some odd Japanese import models not commonly seen on the mainland. The regular ferry service does not offer car carry, so you have to have it barged out there via charter of some kind.
190914-0916 CATALINA 228 by
Michael Stroh, on Flickr
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