Our first morning at the Santa Monica International Youth Hostel, and we tucked into our free continental breakfast.
We then put our walking shoes on and hit the streets, taking the boardwalk along the Santa Monica beach walk to Venice Beach. The beach was very wide and empty, with the occasional life guard station and lined with individually painted murals.
As we reached Venice Beach the stalls and shops were just opening, so we went to explore the canals first.
The tranquil canals were beautiful, with eccentric houses, narrow walkways and cute bridges. It truly was an escape from the hustle and bustle of the beach walk.
The canals are not natural, but a creation of Abbot Kinney, an entrepreneur who won ownership of Venice Beach on the flip of a coin. He then turned a marsh land into a profitable seaside resort. He lured the masses with his Venetian theme, which included buildings, canals and gondolas straight from Italy.
We then walked to Abbot Kinney Boulevard, which was lined with cool restaurants and hip boutiques.
By the time we retraced our steps and arrived back on the beach walk things had really started coming alive.
The boardwalk was lined with stalls and street performers jostling for our attention. We visited Arnie’s old hangout, Muscle Beach, where sadly there were no muscles hanging out training today.
We then took a time out, and had a Jodi Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom hotdog.
Feeling fully refuelled we started walking back towards Santa Monica, admiring the stalls and exhibitionists along the way….Nicola met a kindred spirit, a fellow ‘wine-o’!
On the way back to Santa Monica pier Ben did his best ‘Baywatch’ sprint from a life guard station…all that was missing was the theme tune, those little red shorts, and oh…some SUN!
Back at Santa Monica pier we went for a look around this 1909 golden oldie.
Ben was quite happy to have found ‘Bumblebee’ from the Transformers, but disappointed that he couldn’t transform into a car, like he does in the movies!
We then explored the great shops and watched the street performers along 3rd Street Promenade, which had an impressive selection of dinosaur hedge fountains and vintage cinemas.
As we had been walking for just over 8 hours we decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel for dinner and an early night.
No comments:
Post a Comment