The Beach (s)

After viewing the Rose Parade floats, we headed to the beach.  We couldn't hit them all, but first on the list was the Santa Monica Pier, a large double-jointed pier located at the foot of Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, California and is a prominent, 100-year-old landmark.  It's mostly made of wood and is lined with vendors, eating places, fishermen and has an amusement park for kiddies.

The entrance to the pier

Sid, Cyndi at the pier

Looking down the pier

This is where Rt 66 ended

Sid, Cyndi

Lillie

The Ferris Wheel on Santa Monica Pier

Looking at the end of the pier

One of the footings that has been eaten away, little by little

And, finally........drum roll.......

Toes in the ocean!

We had a late lunch at one of the tourist establishments and then headed to Venice Beach.  Venice (often referred to as Venice Beach) is a beachfront district on the westside of Los Angeles. It is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-half mile pedestrian-only promenade that features performers, fortune tellers, artists, and vendors. Venice was home to some of Los Angeles' early beat poets and artists and has served as an important cultural center of the city.  It is really a very dirty, hippie (think 1960's San Francisco) place where a lot of people congregate to do bike tricks, sell drugs and buy all kinds of junky goods.  We only spent a half an hour or so, but I'm glad that I've seen and experienced it.

The entrance to the beach

An interesting character





View of the promenade

Another view of the park on the promenade

Sid outside one of the vendor's shop

The one (and only) medical marijuana place that we saw in California

Since Venice was originally modeled on Venice, Italy, there are actually canals in the city.  The pictures don't show this, but some of the canals were full of boats docked and we saw a woman loading her dog in her boat in preparation for going somewhere, so they are actually used for transportation.  The houses along the canals are very high dollar and individual.



A view of the canals of Venice

Another canal view

That wrapped up another day in LA.  The weather during our whole trip could not have been any better.  We enjoyed warm temperature, clear skies, very little traffic and, most importantly, relatively little smog. Our many thanks go to Lillie and Kurt who acted as our travel guides and gave us so much information and insight about the things we saw and did.