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?

From San Fran to LA

No, not from New York to LA (we didn't have Patsy Gallant as a passenger) but here's some shots of our journey down the Californian coast on our recent-ish SF/LA trip! Lots of people had recommended taking Highway 1/the Pacific Coast Highway and this is what we did! It took over a day to get there - well, due to waiting in line at the car rental place we didn't depart SF until midday. We stopped over in Santa Barbara for the first night (remember the cheesy 80s soap?) then the next day set off for LA and we were there within a few hours. Here's the evidence...

Starting the long journey...I should add that Gustavo did all the driving while we there. In spite of my motoring "skills" I just felt too nervous about driving on the other side of the road and was worried I might take a turning and forget which side I was meant to be on...whereas to him it was all normal.

Have you ever driven past houses on the motorway/freeway and thought "Yuk, I'd hate to live there?" Quite nice places here actually but not such a nice vista and what about the noise...? Stating the obvious I know.

Love this great big US truck we passed...you don't get many like this over here. The map reflection is me attempting to navigate...

And here's the car we hired for our trip!! Did you know, the car hire company classed it as a "compact"?! I thought my Ford Focus car at home was big, but this took the biscuit. Americans' idea of "compact" is obviously vastly different to ours - but then as I've said elsewhere, everything over there is on a bigger scale. The car could have seated an entire family to be frank. Admittedly it drove very well and was tres comfortable (tons of leg room in the front). One thing that freaked Gu out to start with was the fact it was an automatic, which he'd never driven before (yanks don't "do" manual cars, at least not in vast quantities). However he soon got the knack.

A genuine Californian numberplate.

This was the first stop we made on the trip - Monterey. A bit desolate actually but maybe that's cos it was a weekday. Quite a lot of fishing going on...

Driving through the Californian hills...

Can you see the bridge in the distance? This was the "classic" part of Highway 1 that went on for miles and miles - the road ran very close to the sea/beach with great views. It was also kind of hair-raising in places though - very sharp bends with literal drops down to the sea which meant you really had to slow down - in places the speed limit was 25 mph or less. Most drivers were good at observing this though and I saw very little reckless driving. Thank the lord!

More coastal road views:

There were also several "vista points" where you could stop your car along the way, get out and just take in the scenery! Great stuff! At one vista point we happened upon a charming hippy couple and their friends who were very chatty - they insisted we posed with their "lucky cat" which they take with them wherever they visit:

Miaow!

And this is Santa Barbara, where we stayed the first night. A motel to be precise - we didn't really get to see the city itself properly as we didn't have time.

It really made me think of your classic US motels - all that was missing was Norman Bates. Probably a good thing...

I have to say our motel room was decidedly shabby/run down, but we were only staying one night and slumming it was part of the appeal. And the Fresh Prince of Bell Air was playing on TV...doesn't Will Smith look young?

A little further down the line we stopped at Malibu Beach - roughly 27 miles of beach to be exact! It's a preserved area and very unspoilt. Also loads of celebs and film stars live around here. At one point when trying to reach the beach we took a wrong turn and ended up in a "private residence" area - very impressive houses, though we sadly didn't run into any famous folk. Babs Streisand apparently has a huge compound somewhere around there. A pity we couldn't have dropped in for a nescafe, Matty would have been very jealous.

Some real US school buses! Like, wow!

We stopped and had a burger and chips here...

Some Malibu homes. Pity I didn't take more snaps...

Heading into Santa Monica...the weather got hotter and hotter the further we headed down the coast, yay. As much as I loved San Fran, a downside was the colder and sometimes foggy weather.

And finally we were at our destination - Santa Monica!