No Longer a Venice Beach Virgin

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There was a 12 O’clock check out so we decided to go to the Super Market across the road to get supplies for the long transit in China. Easier said than done. Once again it was a few hours before we managed to extricate ourselves from this little Mexican beauty. We felt like we had been on holiday to Mexico after leaving. Mexican music was pumping out o the PA. There were rows and rows of different types of tortillas, tacos, etc. The where tonnes and tonnes of differnts types of meat in the deli dept. All the veges and fruit were beautifully stacked. If only I had my camera with me! And of course after going through the check out, the girl always askes if we found every OK and is exceptially cheery. I was keen to get in and get out ASAP as we needed to get back to LA before 5,30pm to get the car back. The official time was 8am the next morning, but we had to be as the Disney Gates at 7.20 so our Ride Max plan couldn’t get off to a good start. Brendan insisted on going up and down each aisle taking in the atmosphere and looking at the products at his leisure. When we eventually got out of there he then insisted on going to the clothes shop next door where he bought another pile of clothes. There wasn’t much in the way of women’s clothing, but I bought a T-shirt with Mexico written on it. Everything was very cheap. I was getting anxious as we’d decided to take the scenic route via Venture and Malibu which was going to take a lot longer than the I5. As it was we’d end up on the Pacific Hwy No. 1 at rush hour. My instincts were right as the road through the San Pedros forest was very long and windy so we had to go slow. The road was highlighted in red making me think it was a major road. The reality was it was a very remote road and we hardly saw any traffic. We drove for hours in the valley and saw nothing but citrus trees and surprising some oil fields just as we approached the San Pedros mountains. Driving through Malibu was surprising. The beach house were literally beach houses right on the beach, then literally the road. If they had car ports then it would be nearly impossible for them to get out as the high way literally went past their front door. We had to be careful as people were pulling out. A little way past that people every where were parked on the road side to go to the beach. Hardly any public parking spots. People would just pull up on the side of the road which was incredibly dangerous as the amount of traffic that was passing through was huge and little kids were running out cars etc. I kind of expected this road to be like a major freeway by it was nothing more like a downgraded version of West Coast Road in Perth. Malibu was like 27miles long and at 5pm it became evident that we were no where near Anaheim and in this traffic it be another 2-3 hours away if we stayed on this road all the way to long beach. We must be old hands at this as we seemed much more relaxed in the LA freeways that we did on that first day. In light of the fact that we weren’t going to get the car back this evening, we decided to take in the evening’s activities at Venice Beach, since we missed it that second day we were here. We had somehow got lost off the Pacific Hwy, at least I though I did and we decided to take a turn right to see if we could drive along the beach. We were in a no though road as the beach was there and had no option but to turn out in a parking lot. We told the attendant we were lost and meant to find Venice Beach. To my delight, I consulted a more detailed map I got off the internet and found that we couldn’t have got more central to the Beach if we tried. So we coffed up the $10m parking fee, and gawked at all the fruit loops. This is probably the first place in all of the trip that I felt a little unsafe. There were plenty of families wandering around, but just as many weirdos. We walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean over the not very nice beach just to say we dipped our toes in, watched the people skate boarding in the park for a bit. We then had a cheap bite to eat in a dingy alley that you couldn’t sit down in. so we sat with what looked like to be the homeless people. At about 7.00pm we decided the worst of peak hour would be over, so we had a really good run with the traffic and only took one wrong turn which was easily fixed as we turned too early. Once at Anaheim Plaza we got to our room and was disappointed with the room. Compared to that first night the room smelled of smoke and was very poky. I couldn’t be bothered complaining about it as I didn’t imagine we’d spend too much time in it anyway.

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