Venice Beach

  Los Angeles, California, United States
Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Today we decided to take it easy and spend a leisurely day soaking in the sun and sights at Venice Beach, which is not too far from the hotel. Our gps took us right to the Venice Beach pier and we parked right in front of the sandy, beautiful beach. The weather was nice, in the mid-20s, and the sky was clear blue - totally sunny and warm. This is what I had been waiting for for so long! I didn't venture into the ocean, but did courageously dip my finger into it to see how cold or not cold it was. Not too cold was the verdict! Great!

Venice Beach

But we didn't take a swim, although that is something I definitely want to do later on! We lied down on the beautiful, sandy beach for about 45 minutes and did some serious suntanning. (actually, I'm not sure if I even did get any darker, but the intense ultraviolet rays beating down on us must have done something, if not work on the epidermal melanomas)

After the brief tanning jaunt, we decided to take a walk down the boardwalk, up north towards the Santa Monica beach, which was not too far away. The boardwalk consisted of dozens and dozens of seemingly endless (we never did find the end) small vendors' store fronts, selling all sorts of kitschy items - lots of sunglasses, t-shirts (3 for $9.99!), jewelery, tattoos, Chinese massages, clothing, food, junk, etc... This was interspersed by other activities happening on the other (beach) side of the walk - basketball playing, crazy Jamaican guys entertaining the crowd by stepping on broken bottles, the outdoor gym where men pump iron to show off their muscles, and weird men clad in tight bikini bottoms and Wonder Woman jewelery just standing there on the sidewalk for hours on end for no apparent reason.

Seriously, that last guy was really something else. He was

He's the man

standing on the sidewalk, right in front of Muscle Beach (the outdoor gym) next to a bench that was next to the bench that we were sitting on, eating our lunch. He was a black guy wearing a tight purple speedo-like bottom that fit snugly underneath his greatly protruding stomach, and his naked upper body was embellished by a huge gold necklace and multiple gold wide arm band bracelets. Ben said he was wearing "curly" shoes too, but I never quite looked down that far to see that. After standing there for awhile, he pulled out a portable radio and turned it on, so now he was just standing there on the sidewalk, but also listening to his portable radio. Ben was totally enthralled by this guy, trying to figure out the exactly what it was he was doing there, and why. It really seemed to be no reason more than for people to gawk at him, which we were doing, but subtley! (I also "subtley" tried to take some pictures of him)

The yummy lunch we bought was right in front of here on the

Good Karma

walk at a fabulous take-out window place called "Good Karma" - a 100% vegan fast food outlet. They had burgers, hot dogs, fries and soft serve "ice cream". To make things even more interesting, there was a chin up bar right in front of the place, and you received a discount based on how many chin ups you could do - 25 cents off for 1 chin-up, going up to a free meal for 50 chin-ups! (and no, we didn't get the discount, although one of us tried to (I won't say who))

Chili cheese fries

Anyways, I got a chili (cashew) cheese fries - something I have never had before (!) and Ben got a hotdog. I also got some "chicken strips" to go. And then we got the soft serve ice cream, chocolate for Ben, which was so delicious, and banana for me, which was good too and really made from real bananas. The vegan fast food was so indulging - what a great concept, and organic too! I wouldn't mind going back there again! The Happycow.net reviewers all give it high ratings as well.

We continued on our walking excursion, stopping in to see the various store wares every so often. I got a great pair of sparkly black shoes for $15, Ben bought a great pair of sunglasses for $10 (which he unfortunately lost during his Chinese massage), we bought Venice Beach sun hats to protect our delicate heads, and then... I found this amazing store with all kinds of amazing wrap around skirts, sort of a hybrid between east indian and hippie, in all kinds of various colours and patterns. I bought 3 skirts there for $10 each!

After that Ben was worn out, so we headed back to the car and drove to the near Whole Foods on my list, in Santa Monica, so I could do some grocery shopping for food for the hotel. Whole Foods, to me, is such a heavenly mecca of all kinds of tantalizing, delicious foods. Since I can't really cook in the hotel room, this gave me the excuse to buy all kinds of their various prepared deli meals: pad thai, roasted potatoes, "eggless" tofu salad, tempeh salad, pumpkin and brown rice, and more! Lots of interesting veggie meats there as well, some that we don't have in Canada. I bought an interesting-looking package of seitan to curb my seitan cravings.

Dinner at home

At the hotel I "made" our dinner, which was delicious: a main course of soy ravioli in tomato sauce accompanied by soy "beef" strips, broccoli, roasted potatoes, pita and spinach-artichoke hummous, and a piece of sourdough slathered in Soy Garden margarine for Ben, with chocolate Silk to drink. Yummmmy!