Day 45 Phoenix Arizona to Los Angeles California Thursday 30 April 2015 USA Day 16

Today we leave our friends John and Georgiana, our travel buddies for the last 15 days. It’s been fun as usual exploring new parts of the USA with you and we will miss having you both around. I wonder where we will next meet.
Our deepest and most sincere thoughts go to Georgie and John, and all their families, their father succumbed to a long illness this afternoon. He is now at peace.
We left our hotel on the 8:40am shuttle to the airport to get our 10:56 flight. We had TSA Pre-Approval, so going through airport security was easy. (If you don’t have pre-approval, I’m not quite sure how you get it, you get the pleasure of full screening – shoes off, empty pockets, a mandatory pat-down, etc.)
Our Flight left on time and we arrived in LA around noon. We were lucky with our luggage, it was first off after the priority bags. Our driver was at the luggage carousel and we were at our hotel, the Georgian Hotel, about 30 mins later. We were lucky that our room was ready (check-in was meant to be at 3pm). We settled in, took a few photos from our window (our room is on the 7th floor overlooking Santa Monica Beach and The Pier is just a bit to the left) before heading out for lunch at Blue Plate Taco, a Mexican restaurant just a few doors away. It was very tasty and a good excuse just to stop for a while.
After lunch, Deb had a bit of a rest and I went for a walk to the “local” supermarket (about 5 blocks away) and got some provisions and scouted out the neighbourhood. Three streets back is the 3rd Street Mall that stretches over 3 blocks, full of life, good shops and buskers.
Later in the afternoon we went back to the mall and had a wander around, taking in the music and a few of the shops. We strolled from there to Santa Monica Pier, now that’s an amazing place. A full on amusement park, on a pier out over the water. There were lots and lots of people, locals and tourists, buskers, fisherman, hawkers and beggars. Yes, there are lots of homeless here, many with very clear mental issues, very sad.
We walked along the foreshore path and tried to do a couple of Geocaches, the first on the pier was roped off due to a function (we will try this one again over the next few days – we need a Californian Geocache ) and the 2nd about a kilometre north couldn’t be found. I am sure John and Yvette appreciate the frustration of not finding it! 
For dinner we tried to find a restaurant recommended by our hotel, but couldn’t find it so we found a Bar and Grill, that had the Clippers V Spurs game on and ate there. The food was good but we are both really missing home cooked meals. As a bonus, we had the most magnificent sunset as we finished dinner, the sky was glowing. 
We got back to the hotel to see the end of the basketball game, The Clippers won, tying the series 3 all and forcing a deciding game in LA. Deb had a look to see if we could go, the last game is on Saturday, but we decided to watch it at our hotel (it was VERY expensive $510.00 plus tax for both of us for decent seats).
Tomorrow we are doing a 7 hr city tour, which we are both looking forward to.