A day at the beach

One of the most popular tourist things to do in LA is head to Santa Monica for a day at the beach. Sounds like a great day out!

As we do not have a car, we have been using a mixture of Uber and the Metro to get around. Today we are on the Metro as there is a line that goes all the way to the coast. The LA metro is not the most developed we have come across. To be completely honest... it sucks. It took us two hours to get to the beach because the only option was to go all the way into Downtown LA to change lines AND there was maintenance on the track. We noticed a few interesting locals

hanging around which also added to the experience. No wonder everyone who can chooses to drive and puts up with the crazy traffic!

We finally made it to the beach and sat in Palisades Park for some lunch. Another striking feature of LA is the number of homeless people, there are people everywhere living rough and it seems a lot of them are by the coast. Why not if you can choose I guess. After lunch we walked onto Santa Monica Pier and took in the weird and varied sights of this attraction. There are rides, restaurants, street performers and every souvenir you can imagine. It’s very full on! We extracted ourselves from the madness and went to hire a bike to ride along the promenade.

For the first time ever we hired a tandem bike. It was hilarious. With Jo refusing to be in charge of steering, Crom was in charge of piloting the bike. I’m not sure if Jo was even peddling at the back! The beach promenade is also very very different from what we are used to in NZ. There are people everywhere, shops, restaurants and bars right on the sand and a massive sandy beach. We biked down through Venice Beach and the change in scenery and clientele was striking. This is definitely the grungier end of the beach and there was a funky mix of shops, street vendors and people. We passed the

Venice Skate Park and made our way to Muscle Beach, an outdoor gym made famous by bodybuilders. It is also where Arnold Schwarzenegger used to train. A lot of big boppers working out here!

As the day wasn’t that hot, lying on the beach wasn’t really an option. After dropping off the bike back in Santa Monica we found a beach bar to relax in for a snack and some beers even though it was quite close to dinner time! We took a walk down Third Street Promenade, a shopping and restaurant area, en route to El Chulos to meet Jo’s friend John for dinner.

Jo and John met on a Contiki trip of NZ nine years ago. Yes Jo did a Contiki trip in NZ... but it was in the North Island. It was good to catch up with John and meet his girlfriend Kristy. We enjoyed good Mexican food and some cocktails in a speakeasy behind a butchers with our first celebrity sighting! The locals told us the Metro was definitely off the cards to get home so we got an Uber. It took us an hour! Seriously this city is massive!