Venice Beach and beyond

Hi Folks,

We've been loving Pasadena.  It is like an oasis in the desert.  Here is a pretty typical residential street.  The houses are amazing.  Talk about wealthy.  They're like the cars - big!

This is the drive home from the beach.  This trip should take about 40 minutes and it took us 2 hours mostly due to an accident on one of the freeways.  Clancy took full advantage of the opportunity to photograph the city and the cars.  

You can see downtown Los Angeles through a little smog.  Clancy is amazed to see palm trees all over the place.  She thought it was just one particular street that is always in the movies.  

We rented a couple of bikes from the Santa Monica Pier and peddled along the famous bike/skate/walk/run way to Venice Beach - only about 3 miles for us, but the whole bike way is 26 miles long.  Really great.  We saw some amazing sights, for example this bloke had a pretty big piano on the footpath and was busking.  The brolly was for his dog.

There is an amusement park built on the Santa Monica pier along with stalls, entertainment, people fishing for herring and a film crew doing something with cameras and lights.  No idea who, what or why.  They weren't interested in having a couple of Kiwis in their shoot either.  

Here is Clancy doing the tourist thing on Santa Monica Pier.  We had a really good coffee too.  Still looking for the middle-aged waitress with a big heart.  

As you can see the beach was not very full as yet.  In another 3 hours it was about 4 times as full, which is really still not much compared to the summer crowds.  It was really pleasant actually, not too many people and not too hot although we did get a bit of sunburn.  

Tomorrow is Monday here and we're going to pick up the campervan!  We're going to try and drive up Pacific Coast Highway as far north as San Luis Obispo about half way up California.  We intend to stay at a motor camp at Morro Bay.  

Hope you are all well.  Thanks for the comments so far.