We spent the night in the Best Western hotel in Monterey. As I mentioned yesterday, the hotel itself isn't great in terms of its decor; however the location is literally right on the beach. So much so that the sand was directly below our room balcony. After checking out of the hotel, we headed to the Cannery Row and Fisherman's Wharf areas of Monterey. Cannery Row is the waterfront street in the New Monterey area and has some wonderful shops and restaurants. The name 'Cannery Row' is so called because it used to be the site of a number of (now-defunct) sardine canning factories. The last cannery closed in 1973. Old wooden trolley buses are a feature of Cannery Row and look great trundling up and down the streets (see attached photo). We stopped for lunch ... read more

We have left LA and started the drive up the coast road. We stopped at Santa Monica again as we were driving past. The beach was the set for the tv show Baywatch; however we didn't recreate the opening credits with a run along the beach in our swim wear (instead you have a photo of the look-out tower and the iconic yellow van). We continued to Malibu beach (which wasn't particularly nice) and onto our hotel in Santa Barbara. We relaxed in the sunshine and went swimming in the outdoor pool (the picture below is the view from our room). ... read more

After getting to sleep on Sunday night at 2am, we were awake again at 4am to leave for Heathrow. Although it was expected to be an 11 hour flight, we arrived in LA 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Those 30 minutes were soon swallowed up by the US immigration queues and the hertz car hire. It took 2 hours for hertz to find us a car, although by the number of unhappy people in their LA office, I will say we got away quite well. The hotel is very nice and is located in the downtown district of LA. On arrival we did some exploring and grabbed a bite to eat in an outdoor restaurant (the weather is lovely). We will be taking a hop on and hop off bus tour around the famous Hollywood areas ... read more