Saturday, aka flight day, was spent on the beach. Lynn was a gracious hostess who lent us her car as she was out of town for the day. After packing all our stuff up again, we checked out of the hotel and headed, with hastily scribbled directions, to Venice Beach. After a mild misdirection (the directions said turn right/south, right and south were two different directions, we picked the wrong one!), we made itto Venice Beach.
We managed to find free parking for Lynn's car which was phenomenally
rare from the looks of it. Then we walked out the pier and checked thing
s out. It was suggested to us by Tim and Lynn's friend to rent bikes and head alo
ng the path to Santa Monica, and after stopping for delicious fish tacos and a really great conversation with some slightly inebriated and super happy locals, that's exactly what we did.
My trusty steed for the day.
Simon at Santa Monica aka Coney Island (so named because I was sure there were rides on one of the piers and Simon was sure I was confused with Coney Island. I was right :-p)
There was TONS to see. The Venice Beach strip of shops was highly amusing, but we didn't stop to go into any of them for lots of reasons including having bikes and no locks, n
ot wanting to spend more money and have ZERO room in our bags :-) So instead I played the 'If you ever want to buy me that house in the future, I won't complain' game with Simon. Some of the houses, well, all of the houses, were gorgeous.
I would take any of them!
I meant to include a picture of Venice Freak Show which looked like it was doing some pretty good business that day, but I don't have it with me so I'll add it later. It has significance to me because some of the young people I worked with (actually I'd say they're all pretty much adults at this point, and super successful ones at that!) took a picture in front of it when they were in LA in October of 2009.
Anyway, we saw some pretty cool stuff, like a graffiti area that was people were redoing,
and an area where people were roller disco-ing. We also witnessed what to me as an outsider looked to be an LAPD abuse of power, where a tam-tam group had formed and was rocking out (totally reminded me of summer Sundays in MTL), and the LAPD were rolling up yelling from their SUV's megaphone that they had to move the circle to 'the stairs', wherever that was. It seemed so stupid to me, like they had nothing else to do that day but to move a group of people around for fun. Anyway it looks like the cops won because on our way back the group had moved to the beach a few hundred metres away.
When we'd finished our ride we packed up and headed back towards the hotel. On the drive I gave Simon the mission of finding a Pinkberry's (best frozen yogurt shop EVER, with 5 different froyo flavours and TONS of toppings) that we could stop at. I became pretty in love with the stuff the last time I visited Lynn, and was determined not to leave LA without having at least one. Simon, being the excellent navigator, spotted one sooner after.
I splurged and got a medium pomegranate with blueberries, mango and strawberries on it. And it was heaven. Simon got a mango with mangoes and some other stuff. I wasn't really paying much attention to anything but my own delicious Pinkberry.
We headed back to the hotel and to the airport, where everything went pretty smoothly. The lady at the Air Pacific counter was really helpful and we got away with not having to pay anything extra for our bags since we'd booked before the new rules came in. *Phew*. That could've been up to $100+ for each of us otherwise.
The flights were, thankfully, super uneventful and went by quickly. The stop in Fiji wasn't bad either, went quick and most people on the first flight were doing the same thing as us, so it was great.
I'll post more about arriving in Sydney soon!
