Cruising the Celebrity Coastline - With Nail and I
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
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78
90
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
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Santa Monica,
California,
United States
Friday, December 19, 2008
Well, after we left Derek and June's, I really wanted to explore Malibu and Santa Monica nearby, on our drive up the coast. So we did. First of all, we went to Santa Monica and the famous pier. Much like Brighton pier really. Beautiful but seriously just like Brighton Pier. We had a wander around, listened to some bloke twanging love ballads on his synthesiser....we didn't have time to hang around. Driving to do.....
Next, we went to Venice Beach and walked along the Boardwalk - just a tarmac 'sea front'. A small area is dedicated to sweaty half-naked men grunting and swiping basketballs at each other...always rather pleasing to the eye..hmm...then the rest of the 'boardwalk' is just shop after shop selling tat - T-shirts, baseball caps, puppets, flip-flops, glass ornaments, just tons of really awful useless tat tourists buy as souvenirs! There is also a plethora of restaurants, bars, fast food stalls and ice cream vendors. But what makes this area so popular and a famous tourist spot are the local pavement street-traders. They are all long-haired hippies completely stoned out of their heads, smoking, lounging, 'chilling' in groups on the pavement, while attempting to sell jewellery, paintings, CD's, hippie tye-dye clothes, tarot card readings etc. They're all completely high though! So funny!! We did buy some gorgeous watercolour paintings off of one guy! There was also the famous (he's in Lonely Planet book) Indian who roller-blades up and down in his turban while playing his electric guitar and singing to passer-bys for tips! (David: Hippie entrepreneurial spirit.
Lois is mesmorised by Zorba's words....
Not sure how they justify that, I doubt they care very much about it.)Next, we drove up to Malibu. This was a little bit further up the Coast and another gorgeous oceania residence. More celebrities have homes here lining the beach front with big electronic gates and entry phones with CCTV. It wasn't until a few days later that I learnt Sharon Osbourne has a home here. We went to the nearby famous Malibu Country Mart which is THE local centre for celeb-shopping where they all hang out in Bookshops, coffee shops and jewellers. There were Range Rovers galore!! We didn't see anyone exciting as we cruised around like creeping paparazzi but everyone had sunglasses on and every single car had blacked out windows so everyone just looked like anyone!
As time was getting on, we had to find a bed for the night and the next nearest stop was Santa Barbara. I had heard of this place and David had stayed here before, so we decided to get a Hotel here for the night. Apparently, Oprah Winfrey has a home here and Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch is here!!! Well, we arrived at approx 6pm, passed Santa Barbara Hotel and within the hour we were dumping suitcases in our room. Then, we went out to explore a little. Santa Barbara is absolutely beautiful. It's shopping paradise!! The one long main shopping street is like an English high street but lined with Palm trees. It's compact, clean and everyone is really friendly. I absolutely adored the place and the Christmas lights strung up in the palm trees and over the streets was just beautiful!!!! That night, David and I went to a local bar, The James Joyce, for drinks which was good fun and then we went to the cinema.
A rodent-type creature comes to David
We had had a long day driving and were zonked. The next day, we hit the shops. Heaven!! David went his way to get me a christmas present and I went my way and we arranged to meet up later. They had every shop you could possibly want, Macy's, Saks, Victoria's Secrets, Zara, Body Shop, everything all down one palm-lined high street. Plus, they had a fantastic games shops run by a mad Irish guy where we bought the Catan card game. Later, David and I met up in a fantastic Italian restaurant and revelled about how lovely Santa Barbara is. I told him I was moving here with or without him.....!
The next day, 'back on the road again', we stopped for lunch in nearby Solvang. Solvang is a mad place! It was founded in 1911 and the architecture is predominantly Danish with Hansel and Gretal type buildings. There is a copy of the statue The Little Mermaid like the original in Copenhagen and a bust of Hans Christian Anderson too. There was a brass band playing carols, a horse and cart with jingling bells trotting up and down offering rides through the cobbled streets, bakeries steaming out hot smells of freshly baked bread, tiny, pretty chocolate shops and ornate clock towers and windmills. Despite the lack of snow, Solvang really got you in the mood for Christmas.
Now, do you remember in our last blog, "The Return to LA" when the traffic lights exploded over us as we were reading and discussing that book about relationships? Well, we left Solvang and now it was late afternoon and the clouds were drifting in.
Santa Monica Pier
As we drove down the freeway we decided to ask each other some more questions from that book "All About Us". We had got into a heavy discussion again about something from our past, when we suddenly heard a loud bang and then an even louder scraping noise. I thought something had got stuck under our car. David thought it was just dodgy tarmac. We pulled over on the hard shoulder. We had a flat tyre!!!!!!!!!!! (David: After we'd stopped on the hard shoulder and looked at the sad back tyre a very useful flat tyre light lit up on the dashboard. Lucky we had that light, I was really wondering what it means when the wheel rims have been throwing sparks over half the State.)Luckily, my mobile had life so I called Thrifty. While I was on hold and pressing a million buttons for different options (sigh!) David meanwhile rolled up his sleeves and got the spare tyre out of the boot. Thrifty could only send a breakdown man ALL the way from LA - 3 hours away!!!!!!!!!!! Forget it, Lady!! I stood on the side of the road watching the roaring traffic, making them aware of our presence while David, god love him, got on his hands and knees and got the tyre changed. I was starting to get a bit worried. With one eye on the traffic, my other eye was on the sun setting over the field. The sky was getting dark, headlights were going on, it was getting colder..... There was lots of grunting, grimacing, swearing, panting and more swearing from David! However, he changed it!! Woohoo!! I didn't know he could change a tyre.
Lookimg out to coast of Venice, Malibu...
I was so proud of him! (David: You should talk to Scott and Dean about my speed tyre changing skills...) 5mins before David finished, a Policeman pulled up. Great timing! I said "we could have done with you an hour ago!" and luckily he saw the wit in my sarcasm! With the spare tyre on, we now had to resort to driving 30miles to our next destination, San Luis Obispo, at just 40mph. We got hooted at, stared at and hand-gestured!! (David: On a dual carriageway, by the way. So they could easily overtake really. But no... they have to sit behind me for 2 miles gesturing, before deciding to move their lazy arse... How hard is it to look in a mirror and slightly move your arms on the wheel to shift lanes.... I mean, sheesh, they had enough energy to lift their arms with an extended finger on the end. I can only assume my slow speed woke them up out of their day dream as they oozed their way up the freeway and gave them a shock.)So, we got to San Luis Obispo, otherwise known as S.L.O for short. By now it was early evening so we decided to down tools here for the night and so we went in search of a decent Motel that didn't smell of wee or have paper-thin walls. We stayed at a Quality Inn, somewhere we've stayed before for a brilliantly cheap rate and even better there was free internet, free breakfast, free drinks between 6:30-9pm, free cookies in reception and free DVD rental!!!!!!!!!! Quality Inns are really lovely places, clean, tidy, cheap and very nicely decorated. We couldn't believe our luck! After our free drinks in the lounge by the log fire, we decided to go to the cinema.
Venice Hippy Hangout beach front
Yes Man with Jim Carey was absolutely brilliantly funny. Go and see it. The next day, we got straight on the phone to Thrifty who recommended a garage in the area and we got the tyre changed. The guys there were lovely and friendly and we had a new tyre within the hour. We found evidence of why the tyre had burst: It was a huge nail hole. We then decided to do head into town and do some more Christmas shopping so again we went our separate ways agreeing to meet up later. We were only buying one present for each other this year because of our small suitcases but nevertheless I had no flaming idea what to buy David and whatever it was he was buying me he was having problems with it!!!!! S.L.O is also heaving with shops so I was quite excited by the prospect of shopping again! What more could a girl want?! However, after three hours I had had enough. There was a clear distinction in S.L.O: either ridiculously expensive designer items or cheap as chips bargain bucket type shops selling absolute tat, badly made. No middle ground. Well, maybe a couple of shops, but not many. Exhausted after walking frigging miles looking for that elusive gift, I met up with David again and he'd also had a useless day of shopping. He told me then that S.L.O is actually a student town which then explained a lot! Parents go into the designer shops and the students go into the bargain bucket shops!! We decided to stay in the Hotel that night, so we played Catan card game, drank free beer and ate more Beef Jerky until late into the night.
Solvang Windmill
(David: Our teeth hurt. Beef jerky is hard on them.)The next day, 'back on the road again'. On the way, we agreed to stop at Hearst Castle. David had already been here some years before. It's a massive house with 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms and 19 living rooms and was built for William Randolph Hearst in 1947 with palatial grounds of approx 127 acres with surrounding views of the hills and mountains. The house has many different architectural influences, such as gothic, roman, Egyptian that he admired from around the world. It's now a National Historical Landmark and visited by thousands of tourists every year. In a nutshell, Hearst worked for his father's newspaper building it up to a roaring success again and buying other flagging newspapers that now publish popular titles such as Cosmopolitan then he moved into politics, then the movie business - his life was an inspiration for the film Citizen Cane. He died a millionaire in 1951.
We thought Hearst Castle would be like a National Trust Property. Walk in, explore, walk out. No. There were so many tourists waiting to see Hearst Castle that the next available tour was 2 hours away and we had a long journey up the coast to our next destination. To see Hearst Castle you had to get onto a small tour bus which chugs up the hill to the isolated mansion. It was a regimented, organised queuing system and it was all booked up to the hilt. We bought a book on Hearst Castle and had to leave, vowing to return another day in the future to see it instead.
Disappointed yet amazed at the heaving tourists, we 'got back on the road again'.
Changing the tyre
Soon, we were distracted by the number of people turning off the road to a car park by the ocean. We decided to follow the crowd just to see what everyone was doing. It was an Elephant Seal Colony!!! On the beach. We grabbed our camera and followed the crowds up the gravelled path. Below, was an endless stretch of golden sandy beach. Beyond, all David and I could see were boulders all over the beach. If we saw any elephant seals we would be lucky. They were probably all asleep in some remote hidey hole. As we strolled further up the path with the crowds, David and I did a cross between hysterical laughter and gasps of open-mouth shock!! The boulders we had seen earlier, were in fact THE elephant seals!!! These elephant seals were frigging MASSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!! They were humungous lumps of fat slumped on the sand, barking at each other. Incredible creatures. Later, David made a hilarious point about Americans: "If the British have a habit of pointing out the obvious, like: 'oh look, it's raining'. Then the Americans have a habit of pointing out the obvious, but assuming you are incapable of any kind of perception, don't they?!" when I looked confused, he reminded me of the man that stood next to us on the path above the beach, who smiled at us then jerked his thumb to the beach, "you guys seen the seals?" David almost responded with "What Seals?! where? We were just standing on this purpose built seal boardwalk in the middle of bloody nowhere taking in the sea air."It was getting late. Tomorrow was Christmas eve.
David's Guinness sends him into a surreal world
We had nowhere to go for Christmas yet. We would find somewhere, something always turned up but we both felt the heat was on a little bit to get somewhere. We wanted to spend it in San Francisco. We would never make San Francisco that night. Impossible. We settled on Santa Cruz. Lonely Planet painted a trendy party town with party people and lively bars. It might be great fun for Christmas. The town centre looked really nice but the motels looked grim, not nice enough to spend Christmas in. We thought we would follow up a Lonely Planet recommendation: an isolated Motel deep in the foresty hills just outside of Santa Cruz. Sounded perfect for Christmas. After an hour's drive in the beautiful countryside, along the dark, winding tree-lined road, we found the Motel, tucked away off of the road. They had a vacancy, their honeymoon cottage over the road. This cottage was a wood-built one storey cottage next to the trickling stream and surrounded by sky-high trees. Truly Idyllic. We tramped over damp autumnal leaves to the front door for an initial view. The place was GRIM!!! Dirty corduroy armchairs, damp sheets and curtains, crusty kitchen, sticky carpet, broken gas log fires, awful! Such a shame. We came across a roadside Motel and swerved in. We decided: one night here and then definitely Christmas in San Francisco, a few hours drive away tomorrow. This Motel reception stank of Chicken Vindaloo and bizarrely had the same filthy yellow corduroy armchairs as in the Honeymoon cottage we had just seen!! But our Motel room was really clean and tidy and also had free internet. Excellent. The next day was Christmas Eve. We had nowhere to stay. We had to get to San Francisco. But everything will be alright.........won't it?
Love, us xxxxxxxx
