Saturday morning in Santa Monica, a time for a rest, for some.
Deb had a quiet morning in bed, reading her papers and catching up with things on the net. I had other plans. I figured you can’t be at Santa Monica, just down the road from Venice Beach, without doing a bit of exercise. So I took off early, just me and a couple of hundred locals, for a run down the beach front to Venice and back, mere 7+ km return.
It was a fun run, first down the stairs to the beach, run under the Santa Monica Pier and then just follow the path all the way Venice, turn around and come back!! I set myself 20 mins out and about the same back. I feel about 1/2km short of the Muscle Beach area (Technically I did make it to Venice 😉 ), but I figured 6.2km in 33 mins wasn’t too bad since I hadn’t run for a while.
It was a bit of an eye opener, there are so many homeless here, and many of them seem to have pretty serious mental issues that aren’t being attended to, many seem to be “War Veterans”, going by the signs they hold out whilst begging! A sad reflection on the USA and all of us.
After a lazy morning we went down to Santa Monica Pier and did the Geocache that eluded us the other day. Deb went back to the hotel for a bit of a rest and I went up to the 3rd St Promenade to grab a coffee and watch a few of the buskers. It’s really entertaining people watching over here, if you don’t see a (I was going to say freak, but that would be unkind) someone REALLY different, just wait a minute!! Like I said entertaining.
I got down to the corner of Santa Monica and 3rd, and saw that they had a Farmers Market on, so I messaged Deb and then picked her up from our hotel and walked back. Santa Monica has city wide (almost) free wifi, that actually has some bandwidth to it, unlike Adelaide’s wifi network! The market went for about 2 blocks and the produce seemed pretty good. I can’t get over the size of their produce, even their asparagus and strawberries are huge.
We decided to have lunch while we were out and eventually made our way to the local Olde Kings Head British Pub. We had an “Afternoon Tea” for lunch, which was delicious and served to us by a very delightful English lady, fitting I guess on the day of the birth of a new British Royal.
We spent the afternoon relaxing, time to wind down at the end of our holiday, the Crowd Funding idea isn’t working, get with the plan you lot!!
In the late afternoon we watched the 7th game of the Spurs V Clippers play-off (Clippers eventually won by 2, great game) and then went to dinner to celebrate Deb’s birthday ( we will miss her birthday because we will be in the air on the way home). The celebrations actually started a few days ago in Scottsdale, thanks Claire, and they just keep going on and on.
The Kentucky Derby was on today as well, American Pharaoh won by a length. There was also a World Heavy Weight Boxing Title fight in Vegas tonight, Mayweather vs Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather won, the big headline was that there wasn’t enough space at the Vegas airport for all the private jets of the fight enthusiasts!!
We had a delicious dinner at the Seafood Restaurant next to our hotel and soaked up another sunset, a great way to cap off our last night in LA.
We fly home VERY late tomorrow night, and are hoping to get a late check-out from our hotel.
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Happy Burthday Ma!
Love ya