Blogs from Venice Beach, Los Angeles, California, United States, North America - page 11

Just down the coast a bit from Santa Monica Beach is the more Bohemian, down-at-heel Venice Beach, full of beardy, smoking hippy-types flogging funny hats, telling people's fortunes, playing lanquid jazz melodies or just chillin'.... read more

First let me say what an awesome game! Hats off to Michigan fans who made the trip. Michigan has some cool traditions and fans. We went for the game and found out just why so many people love SOCAL. My wife and I had been to the Los Angeles area before, but had stayed near Huntington Beach and Newport Beach several miles inland. We had a great time, but the flat land and miles of freeways around there didn't do much to inspire us. The area around the Rose Bowl and between Venice and Pasadena was very exciting. Nice drives and vistas and though we had to drive forty miles to the game and parade then back again for parade float viewing the roads were well kept and fast moving for the most part. We stayed ... read more

After the bustle and excitement of Mexico City, I traveled to LA. This time I cheated and bought an Airline ticket. Areo California, a small Mexican Airline. Arriving at Mexico City Airport at 6.30am was one of the most confusing experiences yet. despite speaking some Spanish I could understand very little, as with all public places the public announcements were completely muffled, unintelligible and spoken in the bored tones of someone who doesn't really care anyway. Eventually I made it to the one monitor that actually had my flight details on it, and caught the flight. On the flight, no meal, no movie, not many other passengers, but I was given a small bag of pretzels. I decided that this time I would stay at Venice Beach, hopefully meet someone or some people that would want ... read more

The manager at Jim's Place told us that they had another hostel in Venice, so he booked ahead for us. It would be infinitely better than that German hippy commune. Despite booking ahead, the hostel itself was still full, but they would let us stay in a camper van that was parked out back. It was great and we had it all to ourselves. Greg went off to the gym and I went along with him. I was basically the smallest person there, including the women, and the looks of total disgust when I walked in were a bit disheartening. We were there for about an hour, taking it in turns to do the various exercises, with me using a pathetic excuse for weights. Every so often Greg would point-out some world champion. I couldn't bend ... read more