Santa Monica & Hollywood

Our second day was spent exploring Santa Monica, Venice Beach and Hollywood. Favourite place so far is hands down Santa Monica, that place is incredible in so many ways!

We started off early this morning with a nice American breakfast from one of our Hotels restaurants, it was fab. We then set off for a cruise making our way to Santa Monica and my gosh did it exceed all expectations, I absolutely loved it. The people, the atmosphere, the views, the weather everything was great. We took loads of pictures and explored the little shops along the boardwalk. I bought some souvenirs (of course), rode the ferris wheel, walked along the boardwalk some more sussing out the weird and wonderful people that entertain along there, then headed out onto the beach for some more happy snaps at the famous lifeguard shelter.

Pete and I then left to explore Venice Beach and in all honesty I was majorly disappointed. I don't really know what I was expecting but it wasn't what we saw. The place stunk of weed, homeless people were everywhere and the place just gave me the creeps in general. The little shops on the boardwalk were pretty crappy and the people were super suss too! One guy was chasing a clear paper bag that blew in the wind right under our feet, I felt bad for stepping over it thinking he was trying to do the right thing and pick it up to keep the environment clean - nope he had dropped his bag of weed and it landed under our feet and he was running after it so he didn't loose his goods (probably a good thing I didn't try picking it up!)
Naive little Sophie ha

Next up was Hollywood Boulevard and again I was a bit disappointed. I am glad we went there and the flashing lights were definitely amazing but everything else was kind of I dunno, bland?
It was super close to the ghetto (probably naive little Sophie again), there was a guy jerking off at the traffic lights asking the ladies for a hand, we had men shuving their demo cd's into our hands every minute or so asking for tips to help them get their music career started and then on top of that the shops weren't actually that great.

The characters on the strip were great, a lot of them put in so much effort to dress up but even they demanded tips before you even spoke to them asking for a photo. Hmm, maybe I just had my expectations set too high. Either way I am glad I went but probably safe to say I won't be back anytime soon!

On the way home we decided that we loved Santa Monica so much in the daylight that we would HAVE to go back there tonight to see it lit up a night and have dinner at one of the restaurants on the pier. We didn't time it that well, we got there about 7.30pm and literally just as I was about to hit snap on my camera to get the photos of the park all lit up they decided to turn the lights off for closing time. Damn but I did manage to get a sneaky snap of the Ferris wheel lit up!

We had dinner at a lovely restaurant on the Pier called Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. It was predominately a seafood restaurant but I ended up ordering a salad, after all these burger places I felt I needed a nice salad topped of with a delicious (and massive) cocktail, Pete's Coronorita (a Corona dipped in a Margarita) didn't look half bad either!

By chance over dinner I mentioned wanting to stop in and see where Abby Lee from Dance Moms has her studio. After a quick google search realised we were only a 15 minute drive away so we thought we'd stop in after dinner and check it out. We found it easy enough, it looks exactly how it does on tv but I was shocked to see some lights on inside and two young dances, none of which I knew but was awesome to see it lit up inside and to see at face value what I watch on Tv. Again, just my luck as I went to snap the photo they snapped of the lights ready for home time, gah! Oh well, I got to see it at least :)

We're now back home and ready for a super early start in the morning for our day trip to Mexico! Jet lag kicked in at about 1.30am this morning but my excitement is pushing me through it as I hoped it would. It's almost midnight here now and I best be attempting to at least get some shut eye before our big day tomorrow.

Chat then