Los Angeles

Thick cloud kept the beating sun at bay this morning as we made our way by bus down through Los Angeles to Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier. After Matti’s difficulties with getting to meet us at The Griffith Observatory from Santa Monica we were apprehensive as to how long the journey was going to take. Google told us that it would be 1 hour 15 minutes but Los Angeles’ reputation for being a sprawling mess of traffic made us pessimistic about this. Nevertheless we were wrong as it took us this time both on the way there and on the way back. We think we were more fortunate by travelling on a Sunday as traffic appeared to be light.

Venice Beach is an eclectic mix of sub-cultures, skaters, artists and body builders rub shoulders with cyclists, tattoo artists and dog walkers. Graffiti and murals adorn buildings and palm trees whilst dance and hip-hop music blasted from beach front shops selling souvenirs, art and medical marijuana evaluations (it is legal for medicinal purposes here). We enjoyed trying out the variety of equipment at Muscle Beach and watching groups playing basque pelota, basketball and tennis. Yet walking past many of the beachfront shops you got the sense of Venice Beach being somewhat grimy (perhaps this is part of its appeal?), selling an idea of ‘cool’ to tourists when it’s really just tat. As we walked past a building advertised a $5 ‘Freak Show’ Kim said ‘No thanks, we don’t need to pay for a freak show, we can see enough of them walking along here’. To put this into some context, there was a man and his dog lying under a parasol with the advert ‘the world’s laziest dog’. The dog was lying on its back, legs akimbo, wearing a G-string with dollar bills stuffed in it. Case closed.

Moving along the beachfront toward the Santa Monica pier, we left the shops behind and the sun began to break through the clouds to coat our shoulders in a glowing warmth. We past a field of volleyball courts as a poor man’s Father Christmas reacted to Alex’s AC-DC t-shirt by shouting lyrics at him. Feet, bicycles, skates and Segways moved along the designated pathways before we stopped to eat strawberries in front of the pier. Athletes trained on tightropes and gymnastic rings at the site of the original Muscle Beach formed with the rise in popularity of beach ‘fun’ and exercise in the 1930s. We walked up and along pier’s weathered timbers with its fun fair of Ferris wheel and rollercoaster rising in front of us. We looked back along the railings at the beach with its iconic lifeguard huts (Baywatch theme playing in our heads) and found the sign that marks the end of Route 66.

Catching our buses back up to Hollywood, the sun fully broke free from its cloud prison. The temperature rose as it hit the concrete jungle around us but we were back in the oasis of our hotel before it could take hold of us.Read more