The text over a 10 second Instagram reel from @scenic_adventure_travel reads: “This 93 year old ‘SECRET’ passageway in California feels like a hidden European village and it has some of the BEST gelato you’ll ever taste!” The caption opens with “FREE to visit” and gives the place as Pepper Tree Lane, at 446 S Coast Hwy in Laguna Beach, California. The reel was posted on September 17, 2026.
The clip is a fast walk through a brick paved alley. It opens on a path lined with potted plants and black iron railings, with a staircase climbing to a balcony and a hanging lantern under a green canopy of leaves. A close shot of a stone wall fountain follows, with a terracotta planter above a shallow basin. The camera then moves under a brick arch into a covered corridor lit by lanterns.
Midway through, a hand holds two waffle cones with scoops of gelato in front of a shop sign that hangs over the lane. Then a visitor in a red top walks away from the camera down a narrow brick path past a thick tree trunk that rises through the middle of the alley, with an old stairway and a blue sign beside it. The last shot is a brick archway under a street sign, with ironwork gates and a lantern in the opening.
The caption says the alley was “built around a live pepper tree in 1934” and that its “European inspired architecture feels like you are in a quaint European village.” It lists two shops as must visits, a gelato shop and a chocolate shop, and says the gelato shop uses traditional Italian recipes and makes its gelato and sorbetto daily in small batches. It adds that the gelato is popular enough that a visitor should prepare for a long line. All of those details are the creator’s account.
The caption also gives the travel times a reader would need to plan a day: 40 minutes from Long Beach, 50 minutes from Los Angeles, 30 minutes from Disneyland in Anaheim and 1 hour 10 minutes from San Diego. It says the lane is open daily from 8 am to 8, 9 or 10 pm, so the opening times of a particular shop are worth checking before going.
The official visitor site for Laguna Beach, Visit Laguna Beach, backs up the shop details. Its directory lists Peppertree Lane as “a Laguna Beach landmark offering dining and shopping” and names its tenants, including a chocolate shop with handmade chocolates and truffles, a gelato shop described as Italian ice cream, a women’s apparel shop, a saloon and a newer restaurant. The directory page does not give a build date or a history of the tree, so the 1934 date and the pepper tree come from the creator’s caption alone.
The same official sources help with the other half of the plan, which is getting there without a long hunt for parking. The City of Laguna Beach describes a Coastal Route trolley that runs on Coast Highway and passes through downtown. The page lists it as free during the non summer season and gives run times of every 20 to 30 minutes, with later service on Friday and Saturday evenings. Its published season dates covered September 2025 to June 2026, and it lists summer routes separately, so a visitor should check the current schedule on the city’s trolley page before relying on it.
To use the reel as a plan, go for the lane itself, which the caption says is free to walk. Expect a line at the gelato shop and time the stop around it. Look up a particular shop’s current hours before arriving, and use the trolley or the visit site’s parking page rather than circling Coast Highway.
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