This one may sound eccentric, but hear me out. Santa Monica Airport might be, first and foremost, an airport (for now). But there's a lot more to this place than planes.
Along with the Museum of Flying, the Santa Monica Airport offers two parks- one is a highly rated off leash dog park, restaurants, event spaces, a flying school and a campus of Santa Monica City College. It's a unique spot for an afternoon of exploration.
At four acre Airport Park you can exercise at the "pedestrian runway," a two-way multi-purpose track with distances marked by graphics just like the ones painted for airplane traffic on a tarmac. The runway is surrounded by a network of fitness options, from ping pong tables to slacklines- even a communal yoga mat.
The Museum of Flying celebrates the elegance and romance of the golden age of air travel, and over the years has been host to events and exhibitions including a tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen, aviation pioneers and the original Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts.
Not far from the airport, revisit gentler times at beautiful Douglas Park, named for aviation pioneer Donald Douglas, who opened his factory and airfield on the site of a former movie studio in 1922. His test pilots had to steer away from a line of eucalyptus trees along Wilshire, and bigger planes were wheeled through the streets of Santa Monica to Clover Field. In 1927 the factory relocated to Clover Field (now known as the Santa Monica Airport)
Since 1949, Douglas Park has been home to a clubhouse and lawn bowling green (similar to Italian bocce) and, and is still used for the game. The park, with its three historic ponds connected by streams, was restored in the early 2000s.