Venice Beach/Santa Monica

Day 30 - Wednesday

Left Laguna Beach early before brekkie as the tourist guide aka - Mez had read about some spots to stop on the way up the coast.
First stop - Ruby's Shake Shack right on the beach at Crystal Cove. You are to drop in here and have one of the famous shakes and that we did having a date flavoured shake before brekkie very naughty. Shame it was an overcast morning but that seems to be the norm for the Californian Coast.

The view from the shake shack is magic shame about the weather

Next stop Huntington Beach and brekkie at the famous Sugar Shack Cafe. It was packed and to get a table you wrote your name on the board. Super busy, super big meals and super over the top full of cheese. Not our cup of tea, just too much. Strolled around this popular beach town and walked the pier, beach not looking its best as they were dismantling all the stands from America's Surf Championships held here at Huntington last weekend. 
If you ever get a chance to see this part of the world you have to take the coast rode - Pacific Coast Rd or Highway 1. This road hugs the coast for most part and passes some lovely very open beaches. Had a quick stop at Sunset Beach, not staying anywhere too long as its pretty chilly here today- good day to be on the road although no driving with top down today.
Long Beach next stop.  You drive past lovely beaches and then are faced with a massive ugly port, it was huge. We were later to find out that Long Beach and Los Angeles Ports are side by side in San Pedro Bay and create the 6th largest collection of containers in a port in the world. 

To view this port from this vantage point we had to travel the most nerve racking of bridges ever. It was really high to accommodate all the vessels passing under and it was only 2 skinny lanes and every second vehicle was a truck, with no room to move eventually made it across.

Wanting to stick to the coast we headed for Palos Verdes, which adorns the cliff tops of the Pacific. From here you can view the enormity of the ports below. It’s a bit tricky to stay on Highway1, as the gps constantly wants to take you on the freeways but with a few tricks that we have picked up its doable. 
The drive through Palos Verdes, which has a very heavy Hispanic influence, was very picturesque and easy driving away from the bustle of freeways.

On the other side of these homes is the sheer cliff facing the Pacific.

We drove into the Venice Beach area of LA past the LAX Airport and boy was it busy and noisy and over the top as you would expect LA to be, however, to our surprise we found our airbnb accommodation with relative ease.

Venice Beach in the background from the Venice Pier - they love to have a pier on the Californian Coast

We are staying just a shot walk from Venice Beach in a granny flat on a walk street. This area is very unusual, as you cannot drive on some of the streets, as they are just the width of a footpath aligned with very nice homes that seem to be on top of each but it works.

The front of the home where we were in the granny flat out the back. Very bohemian area in some ways.

This is one of the walk street that we took to get to most places

They are little neighbourhoods all looking out for themselves. You park on the cross streets or if you are lucky to have a space for a car at the back of your smallish property you access it from the small lanes that run behind as well. Very confusing but we are on Nowita Place and behind the property is Nowita Close. This airbnb has all you need and more, just like a large studio apartment with a lovely area to enjoy the outdoors.

This is a box on the street walk - the sign reads 'Little Free Library. Take one and leave one" This is typical of the area. 

Headed to trendy area for dinner but very ritzy and we settled for a take home pizza and salad.

Day 31 - Thursday

Sunny today but still on the chilly side. Headed down to catch a waterbus around Marina Del Rey, the Marina is the world's largest man-made small craft harbour with 19 marinas with capacity for 5,300 boats and is home port to approximately 6,500 boats, only to find that the waterbus only runs on the weekends.

Ventured around to Venice Beach and strolled the boardwalk along the beach and ingested the weird and wonderful sights that are a part of this amazing beach. The beach itself is a lovely wide beach with whitish sands and clear water.

Very touristy junk shops line the boardwalk, with every T-Shirt imaginable and of course the racks and racks of sunglasses.

This is famous Muscle Beach where the guys flex their muscle right on the boardwalk for all to see.

While we were there they had a bikini girl contest and they used the muscle beach gym on the boardwalk for them to line up in. If you look closely you can see one of the muscle buffed guys doing a workout not caring what was going on around him.

So much activity all along the boardwalk - you could spend a day people watching.

Headed back for a healthy tuna salad dinner back at the ranch.

Day 32 – Friday(home in 2 weeks- oh no back to work!!!!)
Made our way to Santa Monica and decided to get some retail therapy in famous 3rd Street. Lots of very different shops, mostly upmarket but interesting. The street is a mall having traffic only at cross streets. You could spend your time just sitting in the mall people watching. There are lots of buskers there to entertain those that sit out the front of shops waiting for the shoppers.
Ventured to the one and only Santa Monica Pier with its thousands of people, loads of shops, amusement park and this pier has loads of history. 

Not the best pic of the pier, however, you get some idea of its length as it starts in line with where the pic was taken, then there is a large carpark, then a large stretch of beach and then still goes out further into the water.

Could you imagine getting to the water for a swim on a hot day with this amount of hot sand to walk over- Santa Monica Beach

Another big day seeing the sights.

Day 33 - Saturday
Decided to brave the weather and head to the beach. By the time we got ourselves organised the weather had cleared and warmed up.

Waiting for the bus. Buses around the neigbourhood are typical of those back home - only come every half hour on Saturdays, so you have to relax the best way you can when there is no bus shelter or seat.

Spent a few hours on the beach doing our usual people watching while trying to relax in amongst helicopters flying over every 10 minutes, so low that you could see the whites of the pilots eyes, the lifesavers getting in their patrol car to drive 10m to blow their whistles and yell at people in the shallow water- bits of panic merchants and the hundreds of light planes flying past trailing all manner of advertising slogans. Not that restful but interesting. Water a bit warmer here than in Laguna.

You see these Lifesaver Posts dotted all the way up the coastline. On a long beach such as Venice Beach there would be one every 100m.

Headed back to catch another bus to Marina del Rey to see Taylor Dayne in one of the many free outdoor evening concerts that the area has throughout the summer months.
Stayed for half of it as it was really cold - bit of a shame.
Time to pack for santa Barbara.