Santa Monica and Venice Beach

I'd decided, before we even reached LA, that Santa Monica would be a good place to pitch down whilst doing the whole tourist thang. Santa Monica is basically the Southern, coastal part of LA. Santa Monica Boulevard runs from the beach all the way into LA itself. The prospect of staying in the heart of LA had given me visions of smog, too much traffic, urban ugliness...and to some extent I was right, so Santa M was a much better choice and as you'll see from the pics, a pretty gorgeous place! There was one drawback though - the price of accomodation - given the niceness of the area. But we were only there a couple of nights and I thought "it's a holiday, why not...?"


I'd had this freewheeling plan that we'd just take each day as it came and sort out the places to stay when we got there - kind of made sense, as I wasn't sure exactly what day we'd be in LA etc. The downside was that it was hard to find decently priced places! When we arrived in Santa M the first place we stepped into was the hotel above (Marriott are universal aren't they). The receptionist was very warm and friendly but the immaculateness of the place should have told us how much we'd be paying...$300 per night!! Erm, slightly out of our price range, holiday or not. So we drove around some more until we found...

This appropriately coloured motel. Actually very nice (much classier than the shabby place in Santa Barbara) and in a very good location. Still not cheap but cheaper! A lesson to be learnt here then: sort out the accomodation beforehand if one can!

Once we'd dropped off our stuff we headed straight for the beach, passing all of these abodes on the way...

Aren't they gorgeous? I bet it costs an arm and a leg to live there though (these places were literally yards from the beach).

Hitting the beach! Look at those palm trees!

Someone attempting to be butch...

The famous pier in the distance there. It's been used in lots of movies, TV shows, etc...

We then went to visit the pier and encountered...Princess Leia and Darth Vadar!! Must have been on their honeymoon or something. No hang on...they're father and daughter aren't they? Okay then, Daddy Darth is obviously taking lovely Leia for a stroll along the pier...don't think he'll get a very good tan dressed like that though...

Naturally I couldn't resist getting into a lightsaber duel...

And the Princess and Simon Skywalker triumphed over the Dark Lord of the Sith!

A genuine Californian cab! It actually looks like it's gonna fall through those wooden slats...

Aaaaah! It could be Brighton, but it's not...

And then, me and Gu braved the Big Wheel! These shots are actually the view from our Big Wheel "carriage"...

After spending some time on Santa M pier we then headed for Venice Beach - once home to lots of beat poets and hippies and the like - now more commercial but still with lots of performers and arty shops/stalls - kind of reminded me of a beach version of Camden. Some of the opening scenes in the Leonardo De Capprio version of "Romeo and Juliet" were shot there there too - some shots might look familiar...

The "V" sign is cool, eh?