On our second day in LA we woke up early and were really excited about our first full day together in Santa Monica. After seeing the weather on KTLA we went for a walk a few blocks up to a Vons grocery store on Santa Monica Blvd and got some water and food to reduce our food costs for our trip. On the way back from our walk we stopped in at Jinkies Restaurant and had a delicious breakfast. Incidentally Jinkies is right across the street from the Santa Monica Hostel which looks from the outside to be clean and neat which can’t be said for all hostels unfortunately.
After breakfast we walked down to the Santa Monica pier and saw a couple of bicycle rental places a half block south and about two blocks south of the pier on the pathway towards Muscle Beach. We rented bikes at the first place for $6 an hour and could have kept the bikes for the day for $15. The place a little farther down the pathway had older bikes and was $7 an hour to rent but the bikes looked a little older. After renting the bikes Michelle found that riding a cruiser in the sand just doesn’t work, we rode the bikes down from the pier right through Venice Beach and back and after that Michelle had had enough on the bike so we just had to pay for the hour.
We spent some time walking down the beach and walking and walking oh and we ate some frozen yoghurt too! By the time we got back to the Pacific Sands hotel we were exhausted from the walk and had a bit of a nap at the pool and then walked around the area some more. On Third Avenue there are a whole lot of shops and the street is really busy in the evening and has stores and movie theaters and generally a lot of people milling around including the homeless people with suitcases in one hand and a Starbucks in the other hand muttering to themselves.
Before dinner we decided to take a bus to Venice and walk down the beach seeing the crazy people and places. Venice is a really great place to visit for a couple hours and from Santa Monica you can take a bus on Ocean Blvd for 25 cents that will take you all the way to Venice. The pub in Venice that we went to for dinner was OK, the waitress seemed to get the price of my burger wrong even though it was a special and then she would not change the bill even after we pointed it out...no tip for her, also there were hookah pipes on the tables, I have never seen a hookah pipe but they are apparently used to burn flavored tobacco and you suck on tubes coming from the bottom.
After we got back to our room we watched a little TV that night. Michelle had me go down to the Theater on 3rd Ave and buy her popcorn and get pops from one of the stores down the street and then took it easy for the rest of the evening as we were still tired from the night before and all the walking that we had already done.