Santa Monica to San Simeon
Started off this day with the aim of driving up to San Simeon. Min though had never seen and had heard of Venice Beach so we headed to the next suburb south and had a quick stroll along the promenade on Venice Beach. It consisted of an uninterrupted stream of tourists, homeless and some rather strange people. It was the homeless people who had stalls on the beach that were the most depressing.
One highlight though was the Gym that is situated on the beach, open to the air. The Gym was holding a bodybuilding competition. There were some very orange and strange people involved in that contest. It seems that the place to go if [your into bodybuilding and] want to be seem in Venice Beach is the gym on the beach. One ‘lady’ who was not in the competition but seemed to be famous was rather disconcerting as I had assumed she was a lady until she spoke. After ‘she spoke I thought ‘she’ was male, well until I sore the bikini that she was wearing and thought there is nowhere to hid your bits (if you have them) in that tiny bit of material.
After that we said goodbye to the smog and craziness of LA and headed north. We had no real plans to stop anwhere except our hotel for the night at Ragged Point north of San Simeon. First stop though was a small beach just north of Malibu for Coffee (from Starbucks where else you gonna get coffee when your in the US) and a snack of Strawberries. It was much better than The Beaches in LA and I recommend anyone heading to California to Surf that you head north of LA to at least Malibu to surf for health reasons. The water is BROWN in LA.
On the way to where we might stop for lunch we spotted a sign “Buelton the home of the split pea soup”. Sorely tempted as we where we decided to press on to at least Santa Barbara for lunch.
Next stop was Santa Barbara for lunch a it had been recommended but Mary-jo at my work and one of Min’s host families in South Carolina. After getting lost for about half an hour we found the main street and a park. Walking around a little we spotted Joe’s Café. We decided to eat there not just because Min was starving and refused to look for another café but also because it looked nice.
Back on the road next stop was San Simeon the home of Hursts Castle. Though I made the executive decision to stop at one of the many Vista Points along the way and looked at a colony of Elephant seals. I have to say I did this for my own benefit as much as Min’s as I have never seen Elephant seals in the wild before either. Min took a million photo’s. Well OK min only took about 50 photo’s of Elephant seals but still it seemed like a million.
Last thing of the day was stopping at the Ragged point hotel situated on a cliff over the pacific ocean. A beautiful spot and quite a nice hotel with a fantastic restaurant.
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